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W6-/3 



PHYSIOLOGY 



OF THE 



SOUL AND INSTINCT, 

AS DISTINGUISHED FROM 

MATERIALISM. 



WITH SUPPLEMENTARY DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE DIVINE 

COMMUNICATION OF THE NARRATIVES OF 

CREATION AND THE FLOOD. 



By MAETYN PAINE, A.M., M.D., LL.D., 



GT0^ O:> 



PEOFESSOE IN THE MEDICAL DEPAETMENT OP THE UNrVEESITY OF NEW YOEK ; AUTHOE OF THE "IN- 
STITUTES OF MEDICINE," "MEDICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL COMMENTAEIES," " A TEEATISE ON THE 
SOUL AND INSTINCT," " THEEAPEUTICS AND MATEEIA MEDIC A," ETC., ETC. J COEEE8POND- 
ING MEMBEE OF THE EOYAL VEEEIN FUE HEILKUNDE IN PEEUSSENJ COEEESPOND- 
ING MEMBEE OF THE EOYAL MEDICO -CHIEUEGICAL ACADEMY OF TUELN ; COEEE- 
8PONDING MEMBEE OF THE GESELLSOHAFT FUE NATUE TJND HEILKUNDE ZU 
DEESDEN J MEMBEE OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LEIPSIC ', OF THE MEDICAL 
SOCIETY OF SWEDEN J HONOEAEY MEMBEE OF THE IMPEEIAL UNIVEESITY 
PHY3ICO-MEDICAL SOCIETY OF MOSCOW ; FOEEIGN MEMBEE OF THE 
MEDICAL SOCIETY OF NOEWAY J OF THE MONTEEAL NATUEAL 
HISTOEY SOCIETY J AND OF MANY OTHEE LEAENED SOCIETIES. 




NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 



FRANKLIN SQUARE. 



18 72. 



rlrVfT^t 



it* 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 



TO 



FLETCHER HARPER, Esq., 

TO WHOSE LABORS SCIENCE AND LITERATURE ARE GREATLY INDEBTED 
FOR THEIR DIFFUSION THROUGH THE PRESS, 

THIS WORK IS MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

AS A TRIBUTE 

TO HIS EMINENT WORTH, AND IN TESTIMONY OF THE HIGH ESTEEM ENTER- 
TAINED FOR HIM 

BY tllS F" HI END, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE 



This work had its origin in a Lecture upon the Soul and In- 
stinctive Principle introductory to the Author's course of Lec- 
tures on the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica 
in the Medical Department of the University of New York, in 
the year 1848 ; at which time it was published by the Medical 
Class. In the Preface to an enlarged edition [1849] occur the 
following remarks : 

" The Author has been actuated in the publication of this en- 
larged edition by the belief that no subject can offer greater in- 
terest to the whole human family; and from its intricacies and 
entire want of demonstration at the hands of Physiologists, and 
more especially on account of the prevalence of Materialism, he 
has supposed that a service might be rendered to every contem- 
plative mind, to the Materialist himself, by affording reliable ev- 
idence of the existence of the Soul as an independent, self-acting, 
immortal, and spiritual essence. 

" ' That the intelligence of any being,' says D' Alembert, 
1 should be able to reason, till he loses himself, on the existence 
and nature of objects, though condemned to be eternally igno- 
rant of them ; that he should have too little sagacity to resolve 
an infinity of questions, which he has yet sagacity enough to 
make; that the principle within us which thinks should ask it- 
self in vain what it is that constitutes the thought, and that this 
thought, which sees so many things, so distant, should yet not 
be able to see itself, which is so near ; that self, which it is, not- 
withstanding, always striving to see and to know ; these are con- 
tradictions which, even in the very pride of our reasoning, can 
not fail to surprise and confound us.' 

"But more than all, the Author has supposed that, if the doc- 
trine of Materialism can be shown to be erroneous, and a perfect 



viii PREFACE. 

conviction of the existence of the Soul as an independent, self- 
acting agent can be established, it would hardly fail to enlarge 
and strengthen our conceptions of Creative Power, of our depend- 
ence upon that Power, and of our moral and religious respon- 
sibilities. Such a conviction, arising from demonstrative proof, 
which appeals to the senses as well as the understanding, it ap- 
pears to the writer, has been wanted by the human family^ how- 
ever they may be disposed, in the main, to accede to Eevelation, 
or to listen to the natural suggestions of Keason. If the writer 
has failed, he will enjoy the consciousness of knowing that he 
will have done no harm to morals or religion, and that the 
worst of the issue will be the trouble that may devolve upon 
others in restoring the subject to its former obscurities and con- 
sequent tendencies." 

The second edition of the work on the Soul and Instinct, con- 
sisting of a small duodecimo, from the Preface to which the 
foregoing remarks are derived, has been before the public since 
1849 ; and as the Author is not aware of any adverse criticisms, 
he offers this octavo edition in the belief that it will be found 
even. more unexceptionable than the former. T^e facts and il- 
lustrations are greatly amplified, and the Author has aimed, so 
far as the subjects will admit, at a simplification that may adapt 
the work to the common understanding. He has also introduced 
a variety of topics which have appeared in some of his other 
works that have only an indirect, but, nevertheless, an impor- 
tant bearing upon the question relative to the Soul as distin- 
guished from Materialism. Among the principal of these is the 
new doctrine of the " Correlation or Equivalence of the Physical 
and Vital Forces." If a principle of life be denied, in accounting 
for the endless and unique phenomena which appertain to the 
functions of organic beings, it is sufficiently apparent, independ- 
ently of the avowed doctrines of materialism, that the phenom- 
ena of mind, from their connection with the same organization 
through which the functions of life are conducted, may be plausi- 
bly referred to the same physical causation. This doctrine of "Cor- 
relation of Forces" has therefore been made the basis of the "new 
materialism." Hence it becomes necessary to expose it's fallacies. 

As having important relations to the philosophy concerning 
the Soul, the doctrine of the origin of living beings in the ele- 



PKEFACE. ix 

ments of matter under the influence of physical causes, and the 
developmental doctrines of Darwin, Spencer, &c, must engage 
our attention ; although well worthy of refutation for other ob- 
vious reasons, especially on account of their conflict with the 
laws of nature and with the Narrative of Creation. 

The Narratives of Creation and of the Flood will be shown, 
demonstratively, to be literally direct revelations by the Crea- 
tor, and that they were intended to be received in their obvious 
sense. The former is immediately related to our main purposes 
of establishing the substantive existence of the Soul as a self- 
acting agent, and a principle of life, as distinguished from exter- 
nal forces, or as the functional results of the organic mechanism ; 
for it is expressly affirmed that "The Lord God formed man of 
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life; and man became a living Soul." " So God created man 
in His Own Image ; in the Image of God created He him." This 
last affirmation was evidently intended to distinguish the image 
of man from that of the ape, and to thus anticipate the develop- 
mental schemes of His rational creatures. But more than that ; 
for in immediate connection with the foregoing declaration, and 
apparently to enforce the distinction between man and the brute, 
and to indicate the supremacy of man, and that animals were 
created simply for his uses, he is authorized to " have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over 
every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 

In regard to the Narrative of the Flood, a primary object of 
the demonstration of its Divine Kevelation is that of showing 
how it goes to sustain our position in relation to the Soul, since, 
as will be seen, it is the direct effect of the Narrative to corrob- 
orate the Divine origin of the Narrative of Creation. 

The intended expositions of the Divine communications of 
these Narratives involve the necessity of a critical inquiry into 
many of the details. That of Creation, for example, must be 
shown to be literally true in its statements as to the creation of 
man and animals in a state of maturity, and that the production 
and organization of the earth are truly represented in the Narra- 
tive. But our demonstration of the Creation of organic nature 
will anticipate the Narrative in our exposure of the fallacies of 
spontaneous generation and the developmental doctrines. In re- 



x PREFACE. 

spect to the details relative to the Flood, we must look at the 
consequences of such a catastrophe, which will bring the Coal- 
formations under an elaborate consideration. But independently 
of the demonstrative relation of these subjects to the Narratives, 
if the Author be correct in his facts and conclusions, there will 
have been settled some of the grandest inquiries that can engage 
our attention. 

But the foregoing Narratives are not introduced as at all nec- 
essary to establish our demonstrations in respect to the Soul, or 
the " Correlation or Equivalence of Physical and Yital Forces," 
or spontaneous generation, or any of the developmental doctrines 
of organic beings, but especially to show how exactly the Narra- 
tive of Creation corresponds in all its details with what is funda- 
mental in Nature, and how that Narrative is sustained by the 
proof which establishes all the specifications in relation to the 
Noachian Flood. 

In regard to the Author's work on Theoretical Geology, it had 
been once his purpose to have surveyed the ground in its great- 
est latitude of details; and with this intention he prepared a 
manuscript which would occupy two octavo volumes of six or 
seven hundred pages each. In the edition of his work on the 
Soul and Instinct [1849] there occurs the following reference to 
the work on Geology. Thus — 

" Several years have passed since I expressed an intention of 
submitting to the world an examination of geological facts, with 
a reference to the statements in the Mosaic Eecords of Creation 
and the Deluge. I had then prepared a large work upon the 
subjects, in which all the facts of importance in Geology up to 
that period are reviewed, and none of them found, in my judg- 
ment, to conflict with the most obvious interpretation of the Nar- 
ratives. I was led to make this attempt of reconciling the dis- 
closures of Geology with what is revealed, and in its literal ac- 
ceptation, so that it should meet with the consent of Science, 
from a conviction that it could be done only by one acquainted 
with Physiology. It has been the misfortune of those who have 
attempted this work by the force of Eevelation to have defeated 
their cause and strengthened their opponents by glaring assump- 
tions ; while the Geologist has adhered to facts according to their 
supposed natural import, and founded theoretical speculations 



PREFACE. xi 

upon them. The enterprise is surrounded with apparently for- 
midable difficulties, which must be explained in conformity with 
facts and philosophy. The fruitful topics relative to the extent 
and orderly disposition of fossils and fossiliferous rocks, the gen- 
eral details attending the incrustation of the globe, the numerous 
and complicated ' enigmas of the Coal-formations,' must be re- 
solved according to natural laws; the Neptunian and Plutonic 
hypotheses must be disproved, and the Creation of the earth, ac- 
cording to the Narrative, placed upon such probabilities as shall 
not conflict with the analogies of Nature, though brought within 
the time assigned by the Mosaic Narrative. The Mosaic Gene- 
alogies of the human race must be also sustained, and it must be 
shown that there is nothing in Geology to contradict the sup- 
posed age of the earth as founded upon those Genealogies. If 
no error have crept into them since their revelation, they must 
be placed upon the same ground as the Narrative of Creation ; 
while, also, they embrace a strong internal proof of their Divine 
origin, and are fully corroborated by the admitted brevity of 
man's existence upon the globe. This being shown, it will be 
readily seen that it reacts as a strong corroborating proof of the 
literal truth of the Narrative of Creation ; and no small array of 
geological facts, and fundamental principles in Science, may be 
brought to the disproof of all theories which conflict with the ob- 
vious interpretation of the primeval history of the earth and its 
inhabitants down to the time of Moses. Indeed there is abun- 
dant evidence in the Coal-formations alone to subvert the whole 
system of Theoretical Geology, so far as it conflicts with the Mo- 
saic statements ; and the primitive rocks bear an overwhelming 
testimony that 'He spake, and it was done.' And coming to 
the constitution of organic nature, the acknowledged facts and 
principles in Science are an impregnable shield against every as- 
sault upon the literal interpretation of the Narrative of Creation. 
"When I had thus nearly accomplished my undertaking, new 
professional avocations devolved upon me, other and laborious 
professional writings urged themselves upon my attention, which 
compelled me to lay aside my geological work. The subject, 
nevertheless, has been constantly more or less before me, that I 
might give greater maturity to the past by the progressive re- 
searches of geologists and by others executed by myself. 



xii PREFACE. 

"I have thus made this explanation on account of my former 
allusion to the subject, and I will also add, that it is now my 
purpose to bring out an abridgment of the manuscript as soon as 
my professional avocations will admit, and to complete at my 
leisure the more enlarged work. I believe it is free from spec- 
ulation, certainly from assumptions, nor has it been prepared 
without those practical observations which are indispensable to 
success in all difficult inquiries." 

Subsequently, in the Appendix to the Institutes of Medicine 
(4th Edition, 1857), the Author, having referred to the published 
abstract of his work on Theoretical Geology, concluded with the 
following remarks : 

"Should he think that the spirit of the times will justify the 
publication of the larger work to which he referred in his work 
on the Soul and Instinct, and which is now completed, he will 
submit it to the press. His main difficulty is the general concur- 
rence of the Eeligious press in the revolutionary views of Theo- 
retical Geology; though, in saying this, nothing more is intended 
than a simple representation of the facts. It is doubtful, there- 
fore, whether a hearing can be obtained — certainly not a pub- 
lisher at his own risk. The Author makes this statement in 
consideration of his former announcement that such a work was 
on hand. 

" The abstract of the work on Theoretical Geology to which 
reference is now made is believed by the Author, and by better 
judges, to be incontrovertible. This is said, however, simply 
for the purpose of inviting a criticism which may either discour- 
age the Author in a farther attempt, or prove to him an incen- 
tive to go on with his solitary work." 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
Introductory Remarks, Opinions, &c Page 17 

CHAPTER II. 
Demonstration of the Soul 27 

CHAPTER III. 
The Doctrines in Materialism 90 

CHAPTER IV. 
Doctrines in Materialism, continued 100 

CHAPTER V. 
Materiality or Immateriality of the Soul 126 

CHAPTER VI. 

Correlation or Equivalence and Conservation of Forces. — Equivalence of Physical, 
Vital, and Mental Eorces. — Matter and Force 140 

CHAPTER VII. 
Other and more direct Facts and Arguments in Materialism, and other Relative 
Grounds considered. — Organic Life. — Creation. — Spontaneous Generation. — Dar- 
winism, &c 173 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Facts and Arguments in behalf of the Materialistic Doctrines, continued. — 
Reign of Law. — Creative Law. — Darwinism. — Lamarckism. — Spinozism 220 

CHAPTER IX. 

Materialism, Pantheism, and Atheism pursued under various other Phases. — Opin- 
ions of Christian and Heathen Philosophers 274 

CHAPTER X. 

Materialistic Doctrines continued in their Relations to the Soul, to the Origin of 
Organic Beings, and to Pantheism. — Doctrines and Responsibilities of Theoret- 
ical Geology. — Heathen Philosophers, etc. — "Emancipation of Science from 
Theology" 318 



xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Narratives of Creation and the Flood. — Their General Bearing upon the Doctrines 
of Materialism, and Progressive Development of Living Beings. — Theological 
Geologists. — Antiquity of the Earth. — The Telescope and the Stars llfcge 357 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Antiquity of Man in its Relation to the Soul, and the Supposed Gradual De- 
velopment of Reason out of the Instinct ofA.nimals 374 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Theoretical Geology, continued, in its Relation to Organic Beings, to the Develop- 
mental Doctrines, and to the Narratives of Creation and the Flood. — Theological 
Geologists resumed 411 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Analysis of the Narrative of Creation. — Its Internal Proof establishes the Exist- 
ence of the Soul, and its own Literal Meaning throughout 456 

CHAPTER XV. 

Physiology of Instinct, according to Distinguished Writers 503 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Demonstration of Instinct, and its Distinction from the Soul 514 



APPENDIX I. 

The Creation and Organization of the Earth 549 

APPENDIX II. 

The Flood 604 

APPENDIX III. 

The Coal-Formations — Their Connection with the Narrative of the 
Flood 654 



ABBIDGED GENEBAL TABLE OF FOSSILIFEROUS 
STEATA. 

(FROM SIR CHARLES LYELL'S "ANTIQUITY OF MAN.") 



10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
21. 
25. 
26. 
27. 



Eecent '. ) 

Post-Pliocene j POST-TERTIARY. 



PLIOCENE. 



MIOCENE. 



y CRETACEOUS. 



Newer Pliocene 

Older Pliocene 

Upper Miocene 

Lower Miocene 

Upper Eocene 

Middle Eocene 

Lower Eocene 

Maestriciit Beds 

Upper White Chalk 

Lower White Chalk 

Upper Greensand 

Gault 

Lower Greensand 

Wealden 

Purbeck Beds 

Portland Stone 

Kimmeridge Clay 

£^^;::::::::::::::::::::::::: 

Great or Bath Oolite 

Inferior Oolite 

Lias 

Upper Trias ~\ 

Middle Trias, or Muschelkalk... > TRIASSIC. 
Lower Trias ) 






Q u N 

£ o O 

O cc 

0Q ■ 



o 

o 



28. Permian, or Magnesian Limestone. •••PERMIAN. 



29. Coal Measures 

30. Carboniferous Limestone. 



CARBONIFEROUS. 



31. Upper) 

32. Lower| 



Devonian DEVONIAN 



84.' Lower} SlLTOIAN SILURIAN.. 

35. Upper ) ^ 

36. LowerI Cambrian CAMBRIAN, 







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PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, OPINIONS, ETC. 

Although the present purports to be the third edition of the 
Author's physiological work on the Soul and Instinct, originally 
published in 1848, it is, nevertheless, rewritten and enlarged from 
the last edition (1849, a duodecimo of 173 pages), with a view to 
an extension of the facts, and to the relationship of the subject to 
momentous doctrines in Revelation. The Author has been also 
especially prompted by a desire of surveying the development 
and progress of materialistic ideas during the last twenty years. 
The present edition is therefore equivalent to a new work, with 
the former for its foundation. Since it was first submitted to the 
public, the new doctrines of the " Correlation or Equivalence of 
Physical and Yital Forces," the "Development of Organic be- 
ings " through the agencies of inorganic nature, " Creation by 
Law," the high "Antiquity of Man," and his primeval barbarity 
for tens of thousands of years, the fictitious nature of the Narra- 
tives of Creation and the Flood, and analogous projects, have 
been urged upon us ; and since they all conflict with the revealed 
existence of the Soul, and a future state of being, and not less, 
also, with the existence of a Personal Creator, they have now been 
subjected to a careful examination, and brought to the test of 
facts and established principles in Science. The Author has also 
brought the Narratives of Creation and the Flood to bear with 
no little force upon his more immediate subject. In accomplish- 
ing this task he has incorporated the essential parts of his work 
on Theoretical Geology, published in 1856 — having introduced 
into the text the internal proof embraced in the Narrative of 
Creation of its Divine Revelation and literal meaning ; and has 

2 



18 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

assigned to the Appendices the facts which corroborate the state- 
ments embraced in both Narratives. Independently, however, 
of this special motive the Author has also aimed in the Appen- 
dices at the correction of errors that have benighted the history 
of our planet. But the latter topics are subordinate to the more 
ostensible objects of the work. 

In the Spiritual Essence of man we meet with a subject upon 
which nothing has been yet said in proof of its existence but 
what Kevelation and metaphysics teach, nothing of its physiolog- 
ical evidences, while Materialism has occupied the whole physi- 
ological ground, with the advantage of dedicating its labors to 
the senses and to the indolence of mankind; and while, also, 
there is not much encouragement for other subjects than those of 
a popular nature, especially for such as are recondite and involve 
more than an ordinary exercise of the mind. "The doctrine of 
Psychology, or the nature and properties of the Mind," says Dr. 
Good, in his Book of Nature, " is the most abstruse and intracta- 
ble of all subjects that relate to human entity, or the great thea- 
tre on which human entity plaj^s its important part ; and, per- 
haps, so far as relates to the mere discoveries of man himself, re- 
mains, excepting in a few points, much the same in the present 
day as it did two or three thousand years ago." 

May I, then, venture to speak of so intangible, invisible an ex- 
istence as the Soul of man ? I know that the demand now, more 
than ever, is for food for the senses. But shall Materialism, anni- 
hilation, have the whole of the game ? Shall the Mind have no 
part in the chase — seeing, especially, that it is itself the intended 
victim ? Shall I be told that I am infringing upon settled prin- 
ciples ? That I am applying an extinguisher to great and shin- 
ing Lights? Shall I be silenced by the denunciations against 
metaphysics ? Shall it be said that Physiology has no relation to 
incorporeal existences? Have not physiologists employed their 
pens in describing the manifestations of Mind as the mere prod- 
uct of matter — mere eliminations from the blood by the intel- 
lectual organ? Are we not told that all the complexities of 
thought, and all that has ever been said, or written, or occupied 
the brain in silent contemplation, are owing either to a chemical 
process among the elements of the brain, or that they are merely 
a secreted product? And have we not patiently, credulously 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, OPINIONS, &c. 19 

heard them ? But some will still say, what connection has physi- 
ology with spiritual existences ? Certainly the same in relation 
to man as the merest physics, since the spiritual part is engrafted 
upon the material. It may not be as clear a subject for demon- 
stration; since, especially, it is concerned about itself. Herein, 
indeed, have lain concealed the difficulties of the inquiry. The 
Mind has wanted a medium through which it may be seen inde- 
pendently of its own direct manifestations ; and this neglect of 
the secondary aid has left the subject to the grasp of materialism, 
or exposed it. to metaphysical speculations. Nevertheless, since 
nothing' is known of material existences excepting through their 
manifestations, and as Mind is on common ground in this respect 
with all matter, and its manifestations incomparably more vari- 
ous, it would seem incontrovertible that more is known of Mind 
than of matter through its ordinary phenomena alone. 

Mr. Locke presents this subject in his "Human Understanding''' 1 
according to its unquestionable realities. Thus : " When we speak 
of any sort of substance, we say it is a thing having such or such 
qualities ; as, Body is a thing that is extended, figured, and capa- 
ble of motion; Spirit, a thing capable of thinking; and so hard- 
ness, friability, and ductility of iron, we say, are qualities to be 
found in a magnet. These, and the like fashions of speaking, in- 
timate that the substance is supposed always something besides the 
extension, figure, or other observable ideas, though we know not 
what it is. Hence, when we talk or think of any particular sort 
of corporeal substance, as horse, stone, &c, though the idea we 
have of either of them be but the complication or collection of 
those several simple ideas of sensible qualities which we find 
united in the thing called horse or stone, yet because we can not 
conceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in the other, we 
suppose them existing in and supported by some common subject ; 
which support we denote by the name SUBSTANCE, though it be cer- 
tain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a 
Support. The same happens concerning the operations of the 
Mind; namely, Thinking, Eeasoning, Fearing, &c, which we, con- 
cluding not to subsist of themselves, nor apprehending how they 
can belong to the Body, or produced by it, are apt to think the 
actions of some other substance, which we call Spirit ; whereby 
yet it is evident, that, having no other idea or notion of matter, 



20 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

but something wherein those sensible qualities which affect our 
senses do subsist, by supposing a Substance wherein Thinking, 
Knowing, Doubting, and a power of reasoning, &c, do subsist, we 
have as clear a notion of the Substance of Spirit as we have of the 
Body; the one being supposed to be (without knowing what it is) 
the Substratum to those simple ideas we have from without, and 
the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the 
Substratum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. 
It is plain then, that the idea of corporeal Substance in matter is 
as remote from our conceptions and apprehensions as that of Spir- 
itual Substance or Spirit; and therefore from our not having any 
notion of the Substance of Spirit, we can no more conclude its non- 
existence than we can for the same reason deny the existence of 
the Body ; it being as rational to affirm there is no Body because 
we have no clear and distinct idea of the Substance of matter, as 
to say there is no Spirit because we have no clear and distinct 
idea of the Substance of a Spirit."* 

But the manifestations of Mind are, as I have said, incompara- 
bly more various than those of matter, and, therefore, according 
to our premises, more is known of the former than of the latter. 
This induction will be more fully presented when I come to the 
consideration of those physical peculiarities of living beings which 
distinguish them from the members of the inorganic kingdom. 
But we may not lose sight, at present, of the general fact that a 
common method of reasoning applies to all our inquiries into the 
existence and nature of all things, whether material or immaterial. 
Our reasoning is alone interested about their manifestations or phe- 
nomena, and in proportion to their variety and the distinctness 
with which they are pronounced will our conclusions rest upon a 
substantial foundation. This great rule was violated by the au- 
thor of the celebrated ideal theory, who, in yielding to the tran- 
scendent light of the phenomena of Mind, rejected the testimony 
which matter offers to the senses, and admitted only the existence 
of the Soul and a Creative Power. That which comes to us under 
the aspect of external material objects was referred by Berkeley 

* Whenever an emphasis is made upon words as they occur in quotations, should 
it affect their usual import, I desire that it may be considered as mine. In the 
mean time I may say, that the object generally is to aid the reader in the intended 
application of the quotation. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, OPINIONS, &c. 21 

to the Mind, as simply impressions made upon our Minds by the 
Supreme Being, in virtue of certain established laws ; and there- 
fore, what are denominated material objects exist only in the 
Mind. But the Mind requires no such factitious aid, while, by 
the same violation of philosophy, the converse may be brought, 
as in the following quotation, to the support of materialism. To 
all who are disposed to regard themselves in the lofty condition 
in which the Creator has placed them, no other evidence of the 
substantive existence and self-acting nature of the Soul should be 
necessary than consciousness, sensation, and voluntary motion. 

On the other hand, notwithstanding all the unique manifesta- 
tions of Mind, no one of which is analogous to any of the recog- 
nized phenomena of matter, it is a common expedient with the 
Materialist to assume that we can not extend our inquiries beyond 
those phenomena which come to us through the recognized condi- 
tions of matter. It is true, this is often expressed in an equivo- 
cal or insinuating manner, as if the writer intended a certain res- 
ervation upon which he may fall back upon exigencies like the 
foregoing. Thus, one of the latest and highest authorities, Pro- 
fessor T. H. Huxley, remarks, in his Lecture on the Physical 
Basis of Life (1868), that — "If we find that the ascertainment of 
the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one 
set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the 
former, and no harm can accrue so long as we bear in mind that 
we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In itself it is of 
little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in 
terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter. 
Matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be re- 
garded as a property of matter. Each statement has a certain 
relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the 
materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred ; for it 
connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and 
suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or 
concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to 
us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise 
the same kind of control over the world of thought, as we already 
possess in respect of the material world ; whereas, the alternative, 
or spiritualistic terminology, is utterly barren, and leads to nothing 
but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be little doubt 



22 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that the farther science advances the more extensively and con- 
sistently will all the phenomena of nature be represented by materi- 
alistic formula! and symbols" 

Materialism has one specious advantage, in its conflict with 
the # phenomena of Mind, in the fact that the manifestations of 
matter address themselves to the senses directly from the mat- 
ter itself, while all the sensible phenomena of Mind come to us 
through the medium of matter. The antecedent, originating ac- 
tion of the Mind is disregarded, while the sensible consequences 
are alone considered. The Mind has wanted exemplifications 
derived from the operation of physical causes parallel with such 
as emanate from the action of Mind upon the voluntary and in- 
voluntary organs — a substitution, as it were, of physical agents 
for the Mind itself. It is my purpose, therefore, to present exam- 
ples of the manifestations of matter through the same anatomical 
structure as employed by the Mind, and corresponding with the 
mental phenomena. In the mean time it should be understood 
that the doctrines in materialism refer exclusively to the brain, 
and that of these doctrines there are two; one of which supposes 
that all the manifestations of mind are owing to a chemical proc- 
ess among the elements of the brain, and the other that those 
manifestations are a secreted product of that organ, and are, there- 
fore, on common ground with bile, saliva, &c. These doctrines 
completely overlook the fact that they necessarily suppose that 
the brain is as much a self-acting agent as has ever been surmised 
of the Soul; and in giving rise to all the endless manifestations 
of Mind, that it is so far equivalent to the Soul of the spiritual- 
ist. The Materialist assigns no exciting cause of those special 
cerebral actions which are supposed to give rise to the displaj-s 
of Mind, and admits that the brain supplies no indication of such 
a cause. 

Thus the Materialist has been guilty of the blunder of invest- 
ing the brain with a self-originating power over its own actions, 
in violation of all that is known of matter, living or dead, and has 
elaborated a doctrine which ascribes to the brain all that has been 
claimed for the Soul in the most transcendental philosophy. The 
brain and nervous system, in being the media through which the 
Soul and Instinctive Principle conduct all their operations, natu-' 
rally inspire the Materialist with great admiration ; for, indeed, 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, OPINIONS, &c. 23 

the brain alone, as the seat and organ of the Soul, transcends in 
sublimity all that is known of the mechanism and laws of the 
Universe — its presiding Spirit approaching in near sublimity its 
Almighty Prototype, or as pronounced by Addison — " The Soul, 
considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines 
(the asymptotes of the hyperbola) that may draw nearer to anoth- 
er for all eternity without the possibility of touching it ; and there 
can be no thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these 
perpetual approaches to Him Who is not only the Standard of 
perfection, but of happiness." 

I say, therefore, it is peculiarly the duty of the Physiologist to 
refute all the purely physical doctrines of Mind, and to point out, 
as well as he may, the characteristics of the " Divine part" of man, 
and its relations to the body. The inquiry concerns, immediate- 
ly, many momentous problems in physiology and the healing art; 
and may be turned, indirectly, to the morals, the dignity, and the 
happiness of society, to the general cause of Religion, and to the 
special glory of the Almighty. 

But the Physiologist should steadily consider Mind in its rela- 
tions to the body. Heaven, alone, can look upon Mind in its ab- 
stract condition ; and of this, as I have said, the Materialist has 
taken an advantage. As presented to the Physiologist, the com- 
pound nature of man is the most lofty, as it is the most noble in- 
quiry ; and however recondite it may be, it may be laid open to 
the understanding of all. Not that it is in the power of finite 
reason to comprehend the manner in which the Soul is associated 
with the body, or how it exerts its effects; but we may look at 
these relations and results through the medium of the phenom- 
ena, and understand them as well as any other designs in nature. 
If we know nothing of the Soul's essence, neither do we of the 
essence of matter; but we know that it is the fountain from which 
has issued all that imparts the least value to man, and all that de- 
grades him below the level of the beast — all the knowledge that 
makes up the civilization of mankind, on the one hand, and, on 
the other, all the vices and crimes which form so fM. a stain on 
that civilization. The body simply renders a subordinate serv- 
ice; the brain being the Soul's principal instrument. The Ra- 
tional Faculties, in seeming independence, work out the problems 
of thought, while the Will takes up any suggestions they may 



24 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

make for the co-operation of the body, and calls upon the senses 
and voluntary muscles for their servile work. 

"Of all organized beings," says Lavater, in his Essays on 
Physiognomy, "with which we are acquainted, there are none in 
which are so wonderfully united the three different kinds of life 
as in man — the animal, the intellectual, and the moral. Each of 
these lives is the compendium of various faculties, most wonder- 
fully compounded and harmonized." "To know, to desire, to 
act, or to observe and meditate accurately, to perceive and wish, 
to possess the power of locomotion and resistance — these, com- 
bined, constitute man an animal, intellectual, and moral being. 
Man, endowed with these faculties, with this triple life, is in him- 
self the most worthy subject of observation, as he likewise is him- 
self the most worthy observer. In him each species of life is 
conspicuous ; yet never can his properties be known except by 
the aid of his external form, his body, his superficies. How spir- 
itual, how incorporeal soever his internal essence may be, still 
he is only visible and conceivable from the harmony of his con- 
stituent parts. From these he is inseparable. He exists and 
moves in the body he inhabits, as in his element. This material 
man must become the subject of observation before we can study the 
immaterial 11 

So far Lavater, who confined himself to the surface alone; 
proceeding upon the simple proposition that — "The organization 
of man distinguishes him peculiarly from all other earthly be- 
ings ; and his physiognomy, that is to say, the superficies and 
outlines of his organization, show him infinitely superior to all 
those visible beings by which he is surrounded." 

Such, then, being the external characteristics of man, the mere 
outline of an organization which he enjoys in common with the 
brute, what shall be said of that internal Essence whose highest 
attributes have no analogies in the brute creation ? It is this 
great prerogative, and the relation of the immaterial to the ma- 
terial part, which it is my first object to consider. I shall distin- 
guish, ther^pre, what has been commonly designated the spirit- 
ual from the material man, though it be obvious that, however 
spiritual, how incorporeal soever, the internal essence may be, it 
is yet inseparable, in the present life, from the mechanism of the 
animated body. I shall carry the distinction farther than is rec- 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, OPINIONS, &c. 25 

ognized by other Physiologists, and shall endeavor to sustain my 
conclusions by facts alone. I shall not, therefore, entangle the 
reader in any metaphysical obscurities, nor shall I, like the Ma- 
terialists, assume imaginary data, nor, like them, reason from 
factitious analogies. On the contrary, I shall endeavor to adhere 
to the legitimate rules of "positive philosophy." 

It must be allowed a misfortune that the subject of Mind, as 
distinguished from matter, has been in the keeping of Metaphysi- 
cians. Learned, and able, and devoted as they may have been 
to the prerogatives of Keason, and with all the lustre they have 
shed upon Mind, they have considered the spiritual part of man 
too abstractedly from His organization. This has contributed to 
the reaction which now assumes the form of undisguised materi- 
alism. Nor is that all ; for with the correlative aid of innova- 
tions upon the science of organic life from the philosophers who 
reduce the whole to the maxims of physics, the more revolting 
doctrine of spontaneity of living beings or creation by the phys- 
ical agencies of inorganic nature, or, as also expressed, by " crea- 
tive law," not only takes a leading rank in the science of life, 
but is even practically illustrated in the manufactured animal 
upon which Science has bestowed the name of its creator — the 
Acarus Crossii — side by side with the Homo Dei! 

I have said that the bold materialism of our age is, in no small 
degree, the parent of the greater evils ; and, that the extent of 
the doctrine both as to the Soul and Organic Life may be dis- 
tinctly seen, and its fallacies exposed, I shall quote several of 
our most applauded authors. To many, I have no doubt, the 
opinions will be new and startling, and the more startling as ma- 
terialism necessarily carries with it the doctrine of annihilation. 
The consequences to which I have already adverted are among 
the causes which have contributed most largely to the turbulent 
movements of the world ; and they are urged upon us as the 
fruits of a high advance in science or of civilization. I say of 
the world in its most comprehensive sense ; for the revolutionary 
spirit is not confined to general literature and philosophy, but 
strikes at the more absolute foundations of society. It has 
reached the purlieus of popular factions, and hails an Ilias Malo- 
rum as its proudest trophy. In its wildest desolation it was shad- 
owed forth by the prophetic ken of Genius relying upon Eetrib- 
utive Justice — 



26 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

'Vengeance, vengeance will not stay! 
It shall burst on Gallia's head 
Sudden as the Judgment-day 
To the unsuspecting dead. 

"From the Revolution's flood 
Shall a fiery dragon start ; 
He shall drink his mother's blood, 
He shall eat his father's heart. 

"Nursed by anarchy and crime, 

He — but distance mocks my sight ! 
Oh — thou great Avenger, Time, 
Bring thy strangest birth to light ! 

"Prophet! thou hast spoken well, 
And I deem thy words divine." 

Although for many of the evils to which I have referred we 
can readily assign the proximate causes, it is not so easy to com- 
prehend the obliquity which sees nothing but matter in the con- 
stitution of Mind, and nothing but accident in Living Beings. In 
ascertaining the ability and arguments of those who seek for fame 
by flooding society with the most demoralizing opinions, I shall 
quote freely from the Propagators themselves, and bring to my 
aid the judgment of those who have devoted themselves to the 
study of the human character. I would not, however, depend 
upon any other means for restraining the outpourings of error 
than the logic of facts ; and although Truth has been said to lie 
at the bottom of a well ("latet in puteo"), if there be any thing 
settled in its maxims, it is certainly the one which enjoins the 
duty of cultivated minds to employ their learning and reason in 
enforcing the spirituality of man and the destinies which await 
him in another life. And as to Eeligion and morals which are 
founded upon something more than a substratum of matter, it was 
the opinion of Addison in his times, (which was never more ap- 
plicable than in our own,) that — "All the arts and sciences, (in- 
stead of being perverted to an opposite effect,) ought to be em- 
ployed in one confederacy against the prevailing torrent of vice 
and impiety; and it will be no small step in the progress of Ee- 
ligion, if it is as evident as it ought to be, that he wants the best 
taste and the best sense a man can have who is cold to the beau- 
ty of holiness." 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 27 



CHAPTER II. 

DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 

According to the plan of our work I shall now proceed to 
demonstrate the Substantive Existence and Self-acting nature of the 
Soul. As the premises include the organization of th# Body, 
something must be said of its constituent parts and functions, and 
the laws which they obey. 

The animal body consists of two groups of organs, one of which 
is essential to life, and is composed of the organs of the so-'called 
Organic Life; the other, which is not necessary to life, is com- 
posed of organs which subserve the uses of the Soul and In- 
stinctive Principle, and are known as the organs of Animal Life. 
Nevertheless, the most important of these non-essential organs, 
the brain and nervous system, the very throne of the Soul, is ren- 
dered tributary to the functions of all the organs of organic life; 
while the vessels of nutrition and absorption, which belong to the 
group of the latter, pervade all parts of the organs of animal life. 

The animal and vegetable kingdoms possess, in common, the 
properties and functions which are essential to organic life. There 
may be the greatest variety in the organic structure throughout 
the animal and vegetable tribes ; but the functions in the de- 
partment of organic life are everywhere the same. They con- 
sist of motion, absorption, assimilation, distribution or circulation, 
appropriation or nutrition and secretion, excretion, calorification, 
generation. The organs that do not belong to plants, and there- 
fore engrafted upon the organic life of animals, are the nerv- 
ous system, the organs of sense, and the voluntary muscles. But 
there is, in reality, only one life, and of this the plant has as much 
as man and animals ; and although the organs* of animal life 
make up all that is elevated in man and animals above the vege- 
table world, those of organic life form the basis of what is pecul- 
iar to animal life. The distinction is simply convenient, as de- 
noting a number of organs that appertain, more or less, to the ani- 



28 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

mal kingdom which are not necessary to life, and which do not 
belong to plants. All those, indeed, that are peculiar to man and 
animals, the nervous system, &c, are constituted upon the same 
plan of organic life, and carry on the same essential functions of 
life as all other organs. But to the so-called organs of animal life 
have been added certain other functions to carry out the special 
designs of animal existence. 

Nothing can be inferred as to the functions of an organ from 
its anatomical structure. All that knowledge comes from an 
observation of their phenomena or manifestations ; and in this 
manner#ve learn that the brain has not only all the vital or or- 
ganic functions, and influences the essential organs of life, but is 
also the seat of sensation, and of the rational and instinctive fac- 
ulties. These faculties are familiarly known as judgment, reflec- 
tion, comparison, imagination, perception, understanding, will, memo- 
ry ; the first four of which are especially characteristic of Keason. 
The whole collectively make up the properties of the Soul, and 
the last four the properties of the Instinctive Principle; though a 
feeble degree of reflection is manifested by animals, as seen in 
their displays of memory, and in the manner in which they seek 
their food through associations with a former experience. 

The various properties of the Mind are more or less concerned 
•in the intellectual functions, and some of them, as the will and 
memory, are distinctly associated in man with the operations of 
judgment, reflection, &c, and consequent upon them. The Pas- 
sions, also, refer themselves to the Mind, but only relatively so, 
as determined by some act of the Mind in its collective sense. As 
the Will and the Passions, however, are important elements in 
my demonstration of the Soul, I shall employ them in the sense 
of mental attributes, for the sake of brevity and of being clearly 
understood ; while, as will be seen, it is entirely unimportant to 
the demonstration whether they be merely the results of mental 
processes or distinct faculties of the Mind. 

Of my immediate premises in relation to the Soul and Princi- 
ple of Instinct- 1 may explain that I regard both reason and in- 
stinct as belonging to man, and instinct alone to animals. Nev- 
ertheless, instinct exists in man, as will be seen, in a degree far 
inferior to reason. Mind is commonly regarded as synonymous 
with Reason, and Instinct a principle by itself. The latter is un- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 29 

doubtedly true of all animals ; but I consider Instinct, in relation 
to man, as a property of the Soul, while in animals it is shorn of 
the great distinguishing attribute of man, the rational faculties. 
To simplify the discussion of this intricate subject, the word 
Mind, with the foregoing explanation, may be applied indiscrim- 
inately to man and animals. Judgment and Keflection are the 
great characteristics of Eeason ; but contrary to the usual accept- 
ation, the Understanding belongs as well to the Instinct of ani- 
mals as to the human Mind. Many may be disposed to consider 
the Understanding a function rather than a property of the Mind ; 
but as the rational faculties are interested in man along with the 
exercise of the Understanding, if it were regarded as a function 
of those faculties the same interpretation Would fail of application 
to the Instinctive Principle. The true philosophy appears to be, 
that, while Perception takes cognizance of the cerebral impres- 
sions that come through the senses, the Understanding in animals 
simply appreciates their nature. But in man Eeason, along with 
the Understanding, takes charge of the sensations, and thus mul- 
tiplies an endless amount of knowledge. Perception, therefore, is 
necessary to give any appreciable effect to the impressions which 
come to the brain through the organs of sense ; and the results 
of the co-operating causes is known as Sensation. It should be 
explained, also, that Sensation is distinguished into common and 
specific. The nerves are the means by which impressions are 
transmitted to the brain, and their expanded extremities, at their 
origin in the brain and their termination in the organs of sense, 
are the parts most important to sensation ; the trunks serving 
mainly as conductors. This is also true of the nerves concerned 
in voluntary motion, and of the involuntary movements that are 
excited by the nervous influence. 

Common sensation appertains to all parts, and is the cause of 
pain. In the natural state of the body it is inappreciable, but 
may be greatly roused by injuries and by disease. Its intensity 
will depend upon the nature of the part and of the exciting cause. 
It is apt to be most exquisite in parts where specific sensation is 
least ; as in tendons, ligaments, membranous tissues, &c. 

Specific sensation is the function through which we acquire a 
knowledge of external things, and is, therefore, the great inlet of 
knowledge. It has, of course, several modifications, consisting, 



30 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

indeed, of apparently five different functions. The expanded 
nerves of sense, it may be superfluous to say, are supplied with, 
auxiliary means, such as the various appendages to the retina, to 
the auditory nerve, &c. A close analogy exists among the whole, 
and they may be brought more or less to the aid of each other. 
Although a common function, its remarkable modifications are 
shown by their uses, respectively, and by the necessity of certain 
specific stimuli for each. 

Perception and the Will are the principal mental properties 
which contribute to the phenomena of animal life. Perception is 
always necessary to true sensation, and therefore to the exercise 
of the senses. The Mind must perceive an impression transmit- 
ted to the brain from aft organ of sense, and consciousness must 
operate before the impression can be realized. The Mind it- 
self is therefore, of .necessity, acted upon in cases of true Sen- 
sation through the impressions made upon its organ, and thus 
brought into action. The Will exemplifies yet further the com- 
plexity of the principles which obtain in the animal kingdom; 
and its phenomena admonish us to pause over that materialism 
which sees nothing in the manifestations of mind but the demon- 
strations of physical and chemical power. It presides in animal 
life, and governs the movements of the voluntary muscles. All 
muscular movements which are not excited by the Will depend 
upon otber causes. Voluntary motion is, therefore, as dependent 
on the Will as true sensation is upon Perception. The Will has 
very little operation in organic life, though the Passions operate 
powerfully upon the heart, the abdominal organs, &c. This pe- 
culiarity is founded in consummate Design, since greater latitude 
to the Will would be incompatible with life; while, on the other 
hand, the Passions and Emotions are allowed, for useful purposes, 
to stretch their influences to the deep recesses of life. 

A proper understanding of my demonstration requires some 
knowledge of the least recondite of the laws of the nervous sys- 
tem, and a close attention to the relations of my facts and their 
logical consequences. The evidence turns wholly upon physical 
or physiological facts, and my essential premises are relative to 
the nervous system. These have been deduced from the most 
accurate and multiplied experiments, and are admitted by all. 
Their simple statement will enable most readers to comprehend 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 31 

all that is necessary to an understanding of the demonstra- 
tion. 

First, then, the brain is especially subservient to tne Soul and 
the Instinctive Principle ; or an equivalent ganglion takes the 
place of a brain in the lower orders of animals. Although, there- 
fore, the brain is the organ through which the Soul and Instinct 
carry on their functions, there could be no thought, no instinctive 
or voluntary act, unless the brain were brought into operation 
by some Self-acting, intelligent agent. The brain, therefore, as it 
is. my purpose to show, is, in its intellectual an$ voluntary acts, 
simply subordinate to that agent, and variously so as the act may 
be purely intellectual, or relate to the voluntary muscles. All 
this is denied in Materialism, which supposes that the brain pro- 
duces the phenomena of Mind without the aid of any such excit- 
ing or co-operating cause. No one doubts, however, that the 
brain, or an equivalent ganglion in the lower orders of animals, 
is indispensable to all the manifestations of Mind. But whatever 
may be the reality, the instrumentality of the brain is apparently 
greater in the functions of the Will and Perception than in those 
of Judgment, Reflection, and Imagination ; though a natural con- 
dition of that organ is especially necessary to a proper exercise 
of the rational faculties. But the greatest final cause of the brain 
in respect to the connection of the Soul with the body, and espe- 
cially the Instinctive Principle, is to serve as a medium of com- 
munication with the voluntary muscles through the nervous in- 
fluence. The Will is, therefore, a stimulus to the brain, as are 
all the mental, faculties, while this organ supplies, in consequence, 
the nervous influence by which the voluntary muscles are brought 
into action by their own inherent power. In respect to Percep- 
tion, we discover the relation of the Mind to the brain in another 
aspect, and also another analogy between the Will and physical 
agents as vital stimuli. Through that property of the nervous 
system known as sensibility the brain is acted upon when influ- 
ences are transmitted by the senses, and the impression thus made 
rouses the Mind, or its property Perception, and sensation is the 
resulting effect. 

The Will, in all its manifestations upon the voluntary muscles, 
rouses the brain into action, develops the nervous influence and 
directs it upon the organs that are set in motion. It is equally 



32 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

so in man and animals ; but in the former the Will is so exten- 
sively concerned in the processes of Eeason as to exalt it far 
above its subserviency to the latter. This variety in the func- 
tions of the Will, and which is demonstrable in respect to the 
muscles, is very expressive of the relations which the Soul and 
Principle of Instinct bear to the brain, though operating in ani- 
mals in the lower aspect of volition. But its combined preroga- 
tives in man show us forcibly the self-acting nature of Mind, and 
that the brain in its relations to the body is especially designed 
as a medium through which the Soul and Instinctive Principle 
may govern the animal fabric ; while the senses do the mutual 
office, through the same medium, of conveying impressions to the 
immaterial part. 

Secondly — In immediate connection with the brain is the me- 
dulla oblongata into which the brain converges at its base, and 
which is second only in importance. This medulla is prolonged 
into the spinal cord, the next in importance. These prolonga- 
tions from the brain, and the nerves which depart from them, 
and certain nerves which depart immediately from the brain, are, 
among other uses, the organs through which the Will transmits 
its influence to the voluntary muscles. These various nerves 
are, also, in their connections with the brain, the seats of sensa- 
tion ; and the whole together are denominated the cerebrospinal 
system. 

This general outline as it respects the great central parts of 
the nervous system is all that is necessary to the demonstration 
before us. They have all, more or less, a concurrent participa- 
sion in the acts of the Will, while the ganglionic or sympathetic 
system of nerves, (of which I shall soon speak,) along with its 
great centre the brain, are the main channels of the passions. 
The medulla oblongata in its connections with the brain has im- 
portant relations to the Will, as well, also, to physical causes act- 
ing upon the brain, when either develops motion in distant parts ; 
or it may be essentially the source of motor influences, as in the 
function of respiration. But it is of no manner of importance to 
my demonstration as to how far the medulla oblongata, or special 
parts of the brain itself, may be concerned in the acts of the Will 
and Passions. But these details should be understood. I shall 
therefore speak of the brain alone in referring to mental func- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 33 

tions and to those reflex actions in which the brain and medulla 
oblongata participate. 

Thirdly — Another system of nerves to which I have briefly 
referred, the ganglionic or sympathetic, having also, like the cere- 
brospinal nerves, the brain for its principal centre, is designed, 
in part, to connect together in harmonious action the involunta- 
ry organs, or those of organic life. It is also through the sympa- 
thetic nerves especially that the Passions display their effects, but 
not so the Will. The Passions may also operate upon the vol- 
untary muscles through the cerebro - spinal nerves, as seen in 
their various manifestations in the muscles of the face ; though 
the Will may be more or less interested in these phenomena. 

Fourthly — The cerebrospinal and sympathetic systems of 
nerves are intimately blended with each other, so that the brain 
is the great centre of both sy stems, and the spinal cord a less gen- 
eral centre, while the ganglia of the sympathetic nerve are local 
centres to that nerve. 

In consequence of the foregoing union of the two systems of 
nerves, the cerebrospinal system has certain organic influences 
upon the essential organs of life. Mechanical or other physical 
irritation of the brain or spinal cord may thus be transmitted 
directly to the voluntary and involuntary organs ; and the Pas- 
sions, but not the Will, by their direct action upon the brain, may 
readily affect these essential or involuntary organs through the 
sympathetic nerve. 

The influence of irritations of the expanded extremities of the 
sympathetic nerve majf be also transmitted to the voluntary 
muscles through the circuit of this nerve and the brain and spi- 
nal cord, as seen in the convulsions of children, arising from 
dentition or from intestinal, irritation, or when disgust, by nause- 
ating the stomach to the extent of vomiting, convulses the ab- 
dominal muscles. 

It appears., therefore, that the brain has an important second- 
ary agency in the functions of organic life, although especially 
designed for the Soul and Instinct. And herein we witness a 
sublime manifestation of the comprehensiveness of Design, and in 
all its unity of purpose, in rendering the intellectual organ not 
only subservient to the animal mechanism, and that mechanism 
reciprocally so to the Mind, but tributary to the uses of the whole 

3 



Si . PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

organic system, upon which, indeed, its own life depends. Kea- 
son and Instinct would avail but little were their functions cir- 
cumscribed by the limits of their organ. Hence the brain is pro- 
longed into nerves, and various connections are thus established 
with all parts of the body and with the external world. These 
prolongations are designed for the simple purpose of adapting us 
to the physical conditions of this mundane sphere, and have no 
participation in abstract intellectual processes. The brain alone is 
interested in the acts of judgment, reflection, memory ; and this, 
when associated with the consideration of the self-acting nature of 
the Soul and of the obvious final cause of its connection with the 
brain, would seem to be a near approximation to a possible ex- 
istence of the spiritual part in total independence of the body. 

The brain being also on common ground with all other organs 
as to its means of sustenance, the design would still be defective, 
and the economy of nature obviously violated, were not an or- 
gan so prominent in the animal mechanism rendered subservient 
to the great purposes on which its existence depends. Therefore 
that other system, the ganglionic or sympathetic nerve, has been 
established, with intimate connections with the cerebro-spinal, 
through which they co-operate together in influencing the func- 
tions of all parts of the body. Nevertheless, the essential nerv- 
ous influences in the organic processes of life devolve mostly upon 
the sympathetic sj^stem, whose principal offices consist in har- 
monizing the actions of the various organs, and in so modifying 
their functions as to variously affect the secretions in their quan- 
tity and quality, and in supplying the stimulus of the nervous 
influence to the muscular tissue in organic life, while that of the 
voluntary muscles, in acts of voluntary motion, is supplied by the 
cerebro-spinal system. 

Here I may stop for a moment for the purpose of saying that 
much has been lately written to show a correspondence between 
the Size and Structure of the brain and the Eational and Instinct- 
ive functions. This is true, in a limited sense, of the size of the or- 
gan in man, both as to the difference in Mind between man and an- 
imals, and among individuals of the human race. The extremes 
in the capacity of the skulls of men have been found to vary 
from 62 to 114 cubic inches, while those of the few gorillas ex- 
amined, and which have the nearest approach to the capacity of 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 35 

the human skull, vary from about 24 to 34 inches. But we have 
no knowledge that there is any gradation in the instinctive facul- 
ties of particular species of animals conforming to the relative 
size of the brain among different individuals of the species; but 
just the contrary is shown by the high development of Instinct 
in the new-born animal. 

Indeed, nothing can be predicated in respect to Instinct either 
of the size or the structure of the brain, and nothing as to Eeason 
of the structure of the organ. The variety in both respects is 
very great; extending from the simplest form of a ganglion in 
the insect to the highest development of the brain in man ; while 
in the tribe of apes the structure approaches near to that of the 
human brain. And since, also, the organ has such important re- 
lations to the senses, the voluntary muscles, and the great organs 
of life, who shall define how far its varieties in structure are trib- 
utary either to Eeason or the Instinctive Principle? Phrenol- 
ogy, in its details, is a failure. But the most conclusive answer, 
both as to size and structure in animals, is rendered by the won- 
derful history of the instinctive manifestations of the honey-bee. 
Nor can I cite a better opinion than that of Sir Charles Lyell, 
who says in his " Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 1 '' 
(1863)— that— 

"The extraordinary intelligence of the Elephant and Dog, so 
far exceeding that of the larger part of the Quadrumana, although, 
their brains are of a type much more remote from the human, may 
serve to convince ns how far we are as yet from understanding the 
real nature of the dependence of intellectual superiority on cere- 
bral structure." 

Nevertheless, as the brain, according to our premises, is espe- 
cially designed for intellectual and instinctive purposes, and is 
only incidentally associated with all other parts to establish cer- 
tain special relations with them and with surrounding objects 
— with the senses as tributary to the Mind, with the voluntary 
muscles as the means of fulfilling other external relations, and 
with the organs of organic life to maintain the foregoing purposes 
— in consideration of all this, I say, it is in the highest degree 
probable that the brain is the seat of something which reaches far 
beyond the mere conditions of matter, and that that something 
may be capable of an existence without the mechanism with 

1 



36 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which it is associated for the purpose of connecting it with the 
surrounding world ; though, as will be seen when I come to the 
subject of the Instinctive Principle, there are reasons for suppos- 
ing that Instinct perishes with the death of the body, while other 
reasons show as probably the immortality of the Soul. But all 
this, independently of Revelation, is only inferable from final 
causes, and the analogies between the human and Divine Mind, 
and is not demonstrable. I shall therefore ask for it only a cor- 
responding importance, and proceed with the demonstration. 

From what has been said, it appears that one of the great sec- 
ondary uses of the brain and spinal cord and their nerves is that 
of co-operating with the ganglionic or sympathetic in establish- 
ing a circle of sympathies among the various organs of the body 
and preserving the whole in a harmony of action that is indis- 
pensable to the life of complex animals. 

Thus we learn that the various parts of the organic mechanism 
of man and animals are not only indispensable to each other, but 
that a certain established influence of one upon the other through 
the medium of the nervous system is necessary to each, and the 
functions of the whole may be fatally deranged, either by causes 
that may interrupt the common chain by which the relations are 
established, as directly by a blow upon the head or by division 
of the sympathetic nerve, or indirectly, as by a blow on the re- 
gion of the stomach, or by poisons acting upon that organ, and 
whose effects are felt perniciousty by the brain. Whatever, in- 
deed, may embarrass the organic functions of the brain will more 
or less disturb this concert of action, maf modify the functions 
of every part, and derange the whole series of vital phenomena. 
The nature of the disturbances will depend entirely upon the na- 
ture of the impressions produced upon the nervous system, as well 
as upon the rapidity and violence with which the impressions are 
made. Direct injuries of the brain or nerves do it in one way, 
and according to their nature and extent. Morbific or other 
causes acting upon other parts affect the nervous centres, and 
consequently give rise to remote derangements in other ways, 
and according to their nature and the violence with which they 
operate. Medicines do the same thing, and according to their 
nature, their dose, and according to the nature of the part, as well 
as the existing state of the part to which they are applied, or that 



DEMONSTKATION OF THE SOUL. 37 

of other parts upon which thej may act sympathetically. Intri- 
cate reflex nervous influences, in all these cases, are liable to 
spring up, and that, too, in rapid succession. Now, as will be 
seen, the Will and the Mental Emotions are exactly on common 
ground in their production of physical results with all the pre- 
ceding physical agents — the Will influencing the voluntary mus- 
cles through direct action upon the brain, and Mental Emotions 
affecting the heart, stomach, intestines, &c, through the same di- 
rect action. Involuntary motions may also arise from certain 
associations of ideas, and which appear to be independent of the 
will or mental emotions, as witnessed in sympathetic yawning on 
seeing another yawn. But some emotion is apt to arise in these 
cases, as in vomiting on seeing another vomit from the effects of 
an emetic, when the emotion of disgust determines the paroxysm. 
The. same laws, precisely, «are concerned throughout. 

Fifthly — Both the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic are composed 
of nerves of two kinds ; one of which transmits the influence of 
the Will and of the Passions, and the effects of other causes, from 
•the nervous centres towards the circumference, while the other 
kind transmits impressions from the circumference to the nerv- 
ous centres. The first of these two orders of nerves are con- 
cerned in the development of voluntary and many involuntary 
motions, and are hence called excito-motory nerves. The second 
order are nerves of sensation, or sensitive nerves; though the in- 
fluences transmitted by them are felt, in the natural state, only 
when propagated through the nerves which supply the organs 
of sense; and the act of the mind known as Perception is neces- 
sary to true sensation. It should be also remarked that, while 
some of the two orders of nerves are wholly or mostly of one 
kind or the other — either excito-motory or sensitive — a very large 
proportion of the nerves are composed of fibres of both orders, 
bound up together in a common sheath, though perfectly distinct 
from each other in arrangement and function. Such is the case 
with the nerves which go off from the spinal cord and the great 
sympathetic and pneumogastric nerves, the last of which supplies 
the sensitive nervous fibres of the lungs in the function of respi- 
ration, and of the stomach in digestion. All the nerves com- 
posed of the two kinds of fibres are known as compound nerves. 
Examples of entire and almost purely excito-motory nerves are 



38 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

rare. They are seen in the facial and third pair of cerebral 
nerves. The purely sensitive are nerves of special sense, and 
consist of the olfactory, the optic, and auditory nerves, and are 
given off by the brain. This double order of nerves pervades 
the entire body, and has brought the physiology of the nervous 
system within the range of the most exact experiment, and has 
become the foundation of many important laws, which are as 
clearly ascertained as any in astronomy. The two orders of 
nerves, or fibres of compound nerves, never interchange their 
functions, one of them being always employed in transmitting 
impressions to the brain and spinal cord and ganglia of the sym- 
pathetic nerve, and the other in conveying motor excitements 
from those centres towards the circumference. 

Of the sensitive fibres of the compound nerves there are two 
kinds, one of which is the medium of transmitted impressions to 
the brain that give rise to true sensation, or that of which the 
Mind takes cognizance, and such impressions must be always 
transmitted to the brain or they will not be felt. The purely 
sensitive nerves are strictly nerves of true sensation. The other 
kind of sensitive fibres of the compound nerves convey impres- 
sions to the medulla oblongata, the spinal cord, and ganglia of 
the sympathetic nerve which are not felt, but produce such effects 
upon those centres as to give rise to reflex actions in other parts 
through the medium of motor nerves or motor fibres of com- 
pound nerves. That kind of sensation I have distinguished 
from true sensation by the name of sympathetic sensation. Of 
the motor nerves and motor fibres of compound nerves there is 
but one kind, their office being purely that of exciting motions. 

The two great branches of the nervous system (the cerebro- 
spinal and ganglionic or sympathetic), and both orders of nerves, 
co-operate together in giving rise to motion in the organs of organ- 
ic life (or such as are essential to life), so far as organic actions 
depend upon the nervous system (which only supplies a stimu- 
lus), while only the brain and spinal cord and the excito-motory 
nerves are concerned in developing the motions which are brought 
about by the Mind and the Instinctive Principle, or by mechanic- 
al or other direct physical irritations of the brain. In ordinary 
respiration, for example, the sensitive fibres of the pneumogastric 
nerve (or that which supplies the lungs and the stomach) are in- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 39 

dispensable for the transmission of an exciting influence to the 
medulla oblongata at the base of the brain ; but in voluntary res- 
piration the pneumogastric nerve is not concerned, but only the 
brain and the excito-motory nerves of the respiratory muscles. 
In the former case the irritation of the medulla oblongata pro- 
ceeds from the lungs, and therefore does not originate in the 
brain or spinal cord; in the latter case the brain is directly irri- 
tated by the Will. In the former case, also, a cause totally distinct, 
and originally remote from the brain, makes its impression upon 
the medulla oblongata of that organ, develops the nervous in- 
fluence, and calls it into operation upon the respiratory muscles 
through the same motory nerves as employed by the Will; while 
in the latter case, or that of voluntary respiration, precisely the 
same nervous influence is brought into action by the Will, and 
through the same nervous channel, and therefore, by parity of 
reason, by a cause as distinct from the brain as is the cause of 
the irritation in involuntary respiration. The first is true, also, 
of all involuntary motions when the nervous centres are irritated 
by impressions propagated upon them from other parts ; and the 
last is true of all voluntary motions, and of all the involuntary, 
when the primary exciting cause, of whatever nature, operates 
immediately upon the centres. 

It is also important to understand that my demonstration is 
concerned particularly with the system of excito-motory nerves, 
both voluntary and involuntary, or those nerves or fibres of com- 
pound nerves which transmit influences from the brain towards 
the circumference, as in voluntary motion, and in the spasms 
produced by mechanically irritating the nervous centre. These 
direct transmissions do not involve the agency of the sensitive 
nerves, but the excito-motory only. Nevertheless, many exam- 
ples of nervous influence will be introduced in which the other 
kind, or sensitive nerves, are engaged along with the excito-mo- 
tory, as contributing to the demonstration. It may be farther 
explained, too, that when the excito-motory nerves are alone 
concerned, as in all acts of the Will, or when the Passions oper- 
ate, or when motions follow in the voluntary or involuntary or- 
gans from mechanical or other physical irritations of the brain or 
other parts of the nervous system, the projection of the nervous 
influence is in a direct line from the irritated part towards some 



40 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

part of the circumference, as the voluntary muscles, the heart, &c. ; 
but when both orders of nerves are interested the influences are 
circuitous — that is, first, from some distant part, through the sensi- 
tive nerves, towards the brain, upon which the transmitted influ- 
ences exert an impression and develop the nervous influence ; 
and secondly, a reflection of this nervous influence through the 
motory nerves upon the distant parts, and by which they are ex- 
cited into action. . With these last examples, however, I shall be 
employed only for supplying corresponding illustrations of the 
more direct proof of the substantive existence and self-acting na- 
ture of the Soul and Principle of Instinct as shown by their di- 
rect action, and that of other causes, through the excito-motory 
nerves, or excito-motory fibres of the compound nerves alone. 

It may be now said that it is generally allowed that some in- 
visible, intangible principle exists in the nervous system, com- 
monly known as the nervous power, but of which I have spoken 
as the nervous influence, to avoid any objection as to the word 
power. Other hypotheses relative to its nature have been more 
or less in vogue, such as galvanism, a nervous fluid, &c; but it is 
conceded by all that some one of them is extensively concerned 
in the processes of animal organization, and having its origin in 
the nervous system. I regard it as a power implanted in that 
system; and have endeavored to show, extensively, in the Insti- 
tutes of Medicine, and in the Medical and Physiological Commenta- 
ries, that it is a vital agent, which is very variously brought into 
action either by physical or mental causes, and that when motion 
is produced by direct or by indirect physical irritation of the brain, 
or by the Will or the Passions, it is in consequence of the devel- 
opment of this nervous power, and the direction of its influence 
upon the parts that are brought into motion. It operates equally 
upon the voluntary and involuntary organs, but through very 
different nerves, and with very different results in the two cases. 
It is most important as it relates to the essential organs of life, 
though its greatest final cause is relative to the non-essential or- 
gans, such as the voluntary muscles, and organs of sense. These 
are the general facts. When the Will produces muscular mo- 
tion it is by developing the nervous power or the nervous influ- 
ence, and transmitting it to the voluntary muscles, when it stimu- 
lates the muscles, and brings them into action by their own in- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 41 

herent properties. And just so of the Passions and of physical 
causes. There is no wandering of the Will or of the Passions 
into the organs which they affect, as has been vaguely supposed 
by such as are not materialists, no more than of physical agents 
when, on being applied to the nervous centres, they excite analo- 
gous motions. But what I have now stated as to the nature of 
the nervous power, or its mode of development and action, or 
whether it have any existence, is unimportant to my demonstra- 
tion. It simply facilitates an understanding of the phenomena 
upon which the demonstration depends. Equally, also, is it un- 
necessary to the demonstration that any thing should be known 
of the special mechanism of the nervous system or of its laws - r 
though an acquaintance with these places the demonstration be- 
yond any obscurity or criticism. All the arguments and conclu- 
sions, however, may be allowed to rest upon the facts alone, 
without reference to their rationale. But the foregoing outline 
of the nervous system will probably be intelligible to all ; and 
there are few, or none, who will not concur in the expression and 
general import of nervous influence* 

Having now stated our anatomical and physiological premises, 
I shall proceed to the direct demonstration, and endeavor to ren- 

* The following remarks in relation to this subject occur in my Institutes of Medi- 
cine : As the nervous system is carried into all parts of the organization of animals, 
but has no existence in plants, and since both animals and plants possess organic 
functions in common, and since, also, the organic functions of animals are variously 
affected through the instrumentality of the nervous system, not only by causes opera- 
ting directly upon the nervous centres and the trunks of nerves, but indirectly through 
the circuitous route of the sensitive and excito-motory systems of nerves, and, espe- 
cially, farther, since there is no anatomical union whatever between the extreme fibres 
of the sensitive and motor nerves, nor between them and the fibres or ultimate parts 
of any other tissue, it follows as a physical necessity that the organic properties and 
functions can be influenced through the nervous system only by a real substantive 
agent which is entirely different from the physical structure itself, and which is capa- 
ble of extending its influences from one tissue to another between which there is no 
physical union, and that, therefore, all the primary essential impressions must be ex- 
erted directly upon the agent itself. Whence, also, it follows that all the results which 
ensue in other tissues, as consequences of the transmission of the nervous influence 
1 from the expanded nerves to those .tissues, are due to primary impressions by the 
nervous power upon the organic properties of such tissues, through the medium of 
the complex structure. Lastly, it necessarily results, from the foregoing demonstra- 
tion, that the organic properties appertain just as much to a real substantive agent, 
known as the Vital Principle, which is as different from the physical structure as the 
nervous power is different. 



42 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

der it of easy comprehension to the uninstructed in the physiol- 
ogy of the nervous system, by stating many illustrations derived 
from the operation of physical causes to serve as parallel exam- 
ples with those arising from the operation of the Soul and the 
Instinctive Principle. 

We have seen that influences may be transmitted from the 
brain and spinal cord towards the circumference or distant parts 
by impressions made directly upon those centres, as when they 
are irritated by mechanical or other physical agents, or when the 
Will and Passions operate. We have seen, also, that impres- 
sions may be made upon those centres through irritations pro- 
duced in distant parts, and then reflected from those centres upon 
other distant parts, and even upon the parts from which the irri- 
tation proceeded originally, and excite motions in those distant 
parts. (This last is called reflex action of the nervous system by 
some, and remote sympathy by others.) This transmission of in- 
fluences from remote parts to the nervous centres, and what is 
perpetually going forward between those centres and all other 
parts in natural states of the body, evinces the great and inscruta- 
ble susceptibility of the brain and spinal cord, and enables us the 
better to comprehend the action of an Immaterial Substance upon 
the brain, and its transmission of influences to all parts of the 
body. An immense proportion of the natural influences upon 
the great nervous centres (and they are unceasing, and manifold 
beyond the compass of imagination, and all for the well-being 
of organic life) proceed from distant parts, and are circuitous in 
their ultimate destinations. They begin in the expanded extrem- 
ities of the sensitive nerves, or sensitive fibres of compound nerves, 
in all parts, by which they are transmitted to the nervous cen- 
tres, where they make their wonderful, and, as it were, infinitely 
complex but unfelt impressions, which are then reflected from 
those centres upon other parts through excito-motory nerves or 
the motor fibres of compound nerves. The palpable exceptions 
to these reflected influences, and where the transmitted impres- 
sions terminate without reflection, are normally confined to the 
impressions transmitted to the brain from the organs of special 
sense, as in seeing, smelling, &c, and when no mental emotion is 
excited by the senses. In all the cases, from whatever parts the 
impressions upon the brain may be transmitted, a physical cause 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 43 

operates upon the organ, which produces in one series of the 
cases movements in distant parts, and in the other series the re- 
sults of sensation — as seeing, hearing, &c. 

The most simple parallel examples between the operations of 
the Mind (by which I mean both the Soul and Instinctive Prin- 
ciple) and physical agents upon the brain may be seen in the pro- 
duction of motion in the voluntary muscles by the operation of 
the Will, and by mechanical and other physical irritations of that 
organ. Spasms and various movements of the voluntary mus- 
cles may be produced by the latter causes, and these may be very 
closely imitated by an act of the Mind. The results from either 
cause are evidently alike. So also, as exciting causes, are the 
physical agents which irritate the brain, and thus occasion move- 
ments in the muscles, and the Mind, which brings about corre- 
sponding movements. The only apparent difference consists in 
the former being passive agents, brought into operation upon the 
brain by other causes, while in the case of the Mind that is as 
palpably a self-acting agent. No demonstration, in all its par- 
allel details, can be clearer or more conclusive. 

Unlike the Will, the Passions or Mental Emotions display 
their effects mostly in the involuntary organs, particularly in the 
heart, the stomach, and blood-vessels of the face. Here, then, 
we will have an elementary example parallel with the effects of 
certain agents of peculiar virtues applied to the brain ; such as 
tobacco, alcohol, &c, which will affect those involuntary parts in 
a manner corresponding with the results of the mental causes. An 
infusion of tobacco, or of opium, particularly the former, applied 
to the brain, immediately lessens the action of the heart after the 
manner of the. depressing Emotions ; while alcohol, applied to the 
brain, exerts the stimulating effect upon the heart of the exciting 
Emotions. On washing them off, these influences immediately 
cease, and the heart resumes its wonted action. And here we 
should not fail to observe the remarkable coincidences between 
the special virtues of tobacco, alcohol, &c, as denoted by their 
action upon the heart through the medium of the brain, and 
the special properties of Fear, Grief, Anger, Love, Joy, &c, as 
shown by their producing, respectively, exactly the same effects, 
and thus supplying a very special proof that the Soul is as much 
a substantive agent as those of a physical nature. 



U PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

There is a remarkable diversity in the results of physical 
agents applied to the brain, not only according to the nature of 
the agent, but the part of the organ to which the application is 
made. Alcohol, tobacco, and opium affect the action of the heart 
when applied to any part of the surface of the brain; while in 
Bernard's experiment, in producing saccharine urine, it was ac- 
complished by pricking the floor of the fourth ventricle between 
the roots of the pneumogastric and auditory nerves. But more 
remarkably, in this experiment, the effect upon the kidneys was 
greatly modified by a little variation of the point of puncture. 
When the floor of the ventricle was pricked at one place between 
the origin of the nerves the urine was quickly increased in quan- 
tity, just as when Fear operates; while a little variation of the 
place of puncture rendered the urine small in quantity, as in the 
case of Grief. Pricking, and otherwise irritating mechanically 
other parts of the brain occasion spasms in the voluntary muscles, 
but only so when certain, though various, portions of the organ 
are thus irritated. Gall, the phrenologist, says that — "When the 
brain is irritated by a splinter convulsions are produced, which 
cease as soon as it is withdrawn." This experiment has been 
often repeated with similar results; and if some have failed it has 
been from not pricking or irritating the right parts of the brain. 
And so will small effusions of blood in the brain produce spasms. 

With the foregoing elementary examples of the coincident ef- 
fects of the Mind and physical causes operating upon the brain, 
we will come to examples of transmitted and reflected influences, 
which are very clearly exhibited in respiration, in vomiting, in 
the contractions of the sphincter muscles, in spasms from teeth- 
ing, or from irritations of the intestines, &c. ; all which may be 
more or less imitated by the Will or by Mental Emotions. 

The function of respiration, as we have already seen in part, is 
carried on through the complex medium of the diaphragm, in- 
tercostal muscles, and the pneumogastric, sympathetic, phrenic, 
and intercostal nerves; the diaphragm being the principal muscle 
which is moved. The sensitive fibres of the pneumogastric nerve 
(which originates at the base of the brain), and contributions of sim- 
ilar fibres from the sympathetic nerves, are implanted in the mu- 
cous or lining membrane of the lungs, and are the nerves through 
which an impression, arising from the want of atmospheric air, is 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 45 

transmitted to the brain, where it develops the nervous influence, 
which influence is then reflected upon the diaphragm through the 
motor phrenic nerve which is given off from spinal nerves, and 
also upon the intercostal muscles through motor fibres of nerves 
which depart from the spinal cord, by which these several mus- 
cles are brought into contraction, the cavity of the chest thus di- 
lated, when the air rushes into the lungs. All these motions 
depend entirely upon physical causes; and the impression upon 
the brain as an exciting cause of the nervous influence is the 
most* important element. 

Now an act of the Mind, through the medium of the Will, will 
carry on respiration exactly after the manner of the physical 
causes, with the only difference that in voluntary respiration the 
pneumogastric and sympathetic nerves are not concerned, but the 
nervous influence is excited by the direct irritation of the brain 
by the Will. The phrenic nerve, as in the case of natural res- 
piration, is the excito-motory nerve through which the Will oper- 
ates upon the diaphragm in voluntary respiration, and the Will 
transmits its influence to the intercostal muscles through the same 
nerves as are concerned in the involuntary act. But the Mind 
may do more than this. It may completely suspend the opera- 
tion of the exciting cause proceeding from the lungs, and carry on 
respiration without its aid for an indefinite time. 

No demonstration can be more direct and conclusive than the 
foregoing. It is absolutely beyond any criticism or cavil, and is 
alone sufficient to prove the Substantive Existence and Self-act- 
ing nature of the Soul ; while the same affirmation may be equal- 
ly made of the immediately preceding. But this is a subject 
that is entitled to all the overpowering evidence that may be 
brought in its behalf, that Materialism and annihilation may be 
silenced forever hereafter. # 

An explanation similar to the foregoing applies to the act of 
swallowing, though in this case the Will and the physical cause 
concur together in exciting the muscular movements. Here, as in 
other analogous cases that will be stated, the muscles which are 
concerned in the act are lined by sensitive membranes, and are 
therefore not exposed to the direct stimulus of physical agents, 
and can be excited to action only by irritation of the sensitive 
membranes, the transmission of this irritation to the nervous cen- 



46 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tres and the propagation of the motor influence from the nervous 
centres to the muscles — the physiology being so far the same as 
in involuntary respiration ; only, in the latter case the muscles 
and the part primarily impressed (that is, the lungs) are remote 
from each other. In deglutition or swallowing, the morsel in the 
fauces or back part of the throat, and as it traverses the oesopha- 
gus or gullet, irritates the sensitive mucous membrane with which 
the muscles are lined, from whence the impression is transmitted 
by sensitive nervous fibres to the brain and spinal cord, and then 
reflected from those centres through motor nervous fibres upon 
the muscles concerned in swallowing, by which, in part, they are 
brought into action. But the Mind also co-operates in the act 
by developing an influence in the brain precisely similar to that 
which the physical cause has excited, and these two influences 
harmonize together in consummating the act of swallowing. As 
in respiration, the Mind may also readily develop all the req- 
uisite nervous influence, and perform the act of swallowing 
without the aid of any physical cause acting upon the lining 
membrane of the fauces and oesophagus. The same philosophy, 
as will be seen, applies to the voluntary and involuntary contrac- 
tion of the sphincter muscles. 

We will next consider an elementary example, before reaching 
the more complex, of parallel effects between the operation of 
Mental Emotions and certain physical causes. A familiar in- 
stance occurs in the coincidences between the effects of an emetic 
and Disgust, or other Mental Emotion, in producing vomiting. 
In the case of the emetic, the influence of its irritation of the 
mucous or lining coat of the stomach is transmitted to the brain 
and spinal cord through the sensitive fibres of the same pneumo- 
gastric nerve as is engaged in respiration, where the nervous in- 
fluence ^developed and reflected upon the abdominal muscles, 
diaphragm, and muscular coat of the stomach, through motor 
nervous fibres, by which they are brought into spasmodic action. 
When the Mind, through the emotion of Disgust, is the exciting 
cause of vomiting, it develops a nervous influence which is ex- 
actly equivalent to that which arises from the action of an emetic. 
There is, however, one more link in the chain of causation in the 
former than in the latter case ; for when the Mind is the excit- 
ing cause the nervous influence is first projected from the brain 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 47 

through excito-motory nerves upon the mucous coat of the stom- 
ach, where it irritates the organ after the manner of an emetic. 
The influence of that irritation is then reverberated upon the 
brain through the same nerves as in the case of the emetic, 
where, as in that case, it develops a nervous influence, as had 
been done by the mind, and reflects it upon the same muscles 
with the same spasmodic effect as in the case of the emetic. 

When vomiting is produced by tickling the throat the Mind has 
no connection with the effects, but the physiology is so exactly 
coincident with that which is relative to the Mind, that it goes 
with the rest, as a clear example in showing how the Mind is 
necessarily a substantive self-acting Agent. The chain of causa- 
tion is the same here as in the case of the Mind, only the first de- 
velopment of the nervous influence is produced by the transmit- 
ted irritation of the throat to the brain and spinal cord. And 
now observe the exact parallel between the Mind or its emotion 
of Disgust, and the irritation which proceeds from the throat to 
the brain, as equivalent causes in bringing the nervous centres 
into action. The Mental Emotion, as we have seen, develops the 
nervous influence and projects it upon the mucous coat of the 
stomach, and the irritation of that membrane thus produced is 
reverberated upon the brain and results in the sensation of 
nausea, when, as a consequence of that irritation of the brain by 
the physical influence proceeding from the stomach, the nervous 
influence is again developed and reflected upon the muscles con- 
cerned in vomiting; while the irritation transmitted from the 
throat to the brain operates exactly after the manner of the dis- 
gusted Mind. Can any thing be plainer to the Understanding ? 

Whenever vomiting proceeds from disturbance, or disease, or 
any novel conditions of organs remote from the stomach and 
brain, the same chain of causation obtains as in irritating the 
throat; the point of departure being the affected part, and the 
nerves supplying it are the organs of transmission to the nervous 
centres. When the irritation in these physical cases is thus 
made upon the brain, it is exactly equivalent to the mental irri- 
gation when the Mind is the exciting cause of vomiting, and the 
subsequent steps in the process are exactly the same in all the 
cases. The sickness and vomiting which spring from sailing, 
whirling, riding, &c, depend upon the same chain of influences. 



48 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

In these examples the impressions which are transmitted to the 
brain from remote organs arise from mechanical effects upon 
those parts ; but the same mechanical effect is more or less ex- 
erted directly upon the brain itself — often, indeed, more so upon 
the brain than upon other parts, when its action upon the brain 
is equivalent to the direct action of Disgust in producing vomit-* 
ing, according to the preceding examples. The influences upon 
the brain in these cases arise chiefly from the causes of a mechan- 
ical nature ; but the Mind often participates in developing the 
nervous influence through some Emotion that grows out of the 
physical influences, such as a fearful expectation, &c. ; and, as 
may be further known from another fact which concurs in my 
demonstration, that a strong determination of the Will to resist 
sea-sickness will often prevent its occurrence, especially the act of 
vomiting ; while, on the other hand, if one has made up his mind 
to be sick, he will surely be so, though in the midst of a calm. 
In the latter case the development of the nervous influence by 
the motion of the vessel falls short of the intensity necessary to 
vomiting, and the Mental Emotion contributes its part in de- 
veloping an adequate force; while in the former case the Will 
keeps down Mental Emotion, and thus deprives the physical in- 
fluences of a concurring cause that is often necessary to consum- 
mate the act of vomiting. Nor will the reader neglect to observe 
in these examples how the Will has a mastery over the Emo- 
tions, and how either, according to its operation, is as much a for- 
eign cause acting upon the brain as are the mechanical — the Men- 
tal Emotions rousing the brain to action, or the Will counteract- 
ing the emotional tendency of the Mind. 

And so of other analogous cases; an<J so too, when offensive 
odors, disgusting sights, &c, occasion vomiting through the. Men- 
tal Emotions which they excite, or as Memory will do the same 
by calling up a recollection of their former effects. In all such 
parallel cases with vomiting as produced by an emetic, and in 
various conditions of disease whose tendency may be to produce 
vomiting, the Mind, by resolving not to co-operate with the phys- 
ical causes, or by keeping down fear and other depressing Emo- 
tions, may often yield no little protection' to the stomach. And 
it should be duly considered that in this counteracting influence 
of the Mind, in which the Will is seen not only overpowering the 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 49 

effects of physical causes but of Mental Emotions, we have, also, 
another exemplification of its substantive existence and self-acting 
nature as contrasted with its co-operation with the same physical 
causes in other cases. Nothing is wanting but a minute analysis 
of the facts and their relations to render the question before us as 
plain as the most tangible objects. 

In farther illustration of what has been now said of reflected 
influences of the nervous system in generating motion, whether 
occasioned by physical or mental causes, we may consider the 
very complex example of the motions of the iris in seeing, which 
are of an entirely involuntary nature, while the iris stands in the 
same relation to perfectly distinct sensitive and motor nerves as 
do the lungs in respiration or the stomach in vomiting. This 
complexity of nerves for the adjustment of the pupil to the de- 
gree of light acting upon the retina or expanded portion of the 
sensitive nerve in the ball of the eye will be now stated, not only 
as illustrating what has been already said of physical and mental 
causes in developing the nervous influence, but to give the reader 
a farther apprehension, however vague, of the wonderful involu- 
tions of the nervous system, instituted for the fulfillment of de- 
signs which can not fail of impressing the contemplative mind 
with- reverential awe, and with the deepest conviction that we are 
"fearfully and wonderfully made." It will also thus become 
more and more apparent that when such complexities and exact 
adjustments of the nervous sj^stem have been designed, in part, 
as a medium through which physical causes may operate upon 
the animal mechanism, it will as clearly follow that the brain and 
nerves are equally in the same sense instruments only of a remote 
cause when similar results are brought about by the Mind. It is 
worth premising, also, that although the iris dilates and contracts 
under the slightest impressions of light transmitted by the nerves, 
it may be pricked with a knife without exciting contraction. 

I proceed, therefore, to say that, in seeing, the optic nerve not 
only conveys the impression of light to the brain which is recog- 
nized by the Mind, but it is also the sensitive nerve for the iris, 
by which the pupil is exactly adjusted to the degree of light, 
while the excito-motory nerve of the iris is made up of contribu- 
tions of nervous fibres from the ciliary branches of the lenticular 
ganglion and of filaments from the third and fifth pair of cere- 
al 



50 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

bral nerves, and of filaments from the cervical sympathetic nerve 
which have their origin in the spinal cord. The brain is the 
bond of union as in the foregoing cases, and here, as there, the 
impression produced upon the brain by the action of light de- 
velops the nervous influence, which is then reflected upon the iris 
through its excito-motory nerve, and just according to the degree 
of this influence the iris contracts or dilates. For an obvious 
design, the iris, unlike the diaphragm and other muscles in res- 
piration, is withdrawn from the Will; but as the stimulus of 
light is indispensable to the natural contraction of the iris, and is 
so far unobserved, it will be readily understood how an impres- 
sion upon the pneumogastric nerve in the lungs is necessary to 
the involuntary motions of the respiratory muscles ; and since the 
transmitted impressions to the brain excite no sensation, either in 
the foregoing cases or in all the endless variety of reflex actions 
in which physical causes institute the movements, it becomes 
evident that it is no objection to the supposed action of an im- 
material substance upon the brain that it is not felt. 

The foregoing anatomical and physiological explanation as to 
the iris contributes, also, towards an understanding of the elabo- 
rate mechanism through which a Mental Emotion operates in 
producing vomiting, and brings the Mind into the same relation 
with the brain as a remote exciting cause of the nervous influence 
that convulses the muscles in vomiting, as light in its develop- 
ment of a nervous influence that occasions the motions of the iris. 

With the foregoing physiology of the movements of the iris 
may be here associated that of sneezing, as brought about both by 
the sun's light and by the associated action of Memory and Eeflec- 
tion. When owing to the direct action of irritants upon the mu- 
cous or lining membrane of the nose, such as tobacco, the irrita- 
tion is made upon the sensitive fibres of a compound nerve dis- 
tributed from the fifth pair of cerebral nerves upon that mem- 
brane, and this irritation, after being transmitted by that nerve 
to the brain, excites the nervous influence which is reflected upon 
the respiratory muscles as in the function of respiration ; except- 
ing in the former case the muscles are thrown into convulsive 
action — as we shall soon see may be done by the Mind alone. 
When the sun's light occasions sneezing, the primary impression is 
made, as in seeing, upon the optic nerve, and through that medium 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 51 

so irritates the brain as to occasion a development of the nervous 
influence, which is reflected upon the lining membrane of the 
nose through the motor fibres of the foregoing branch of the fifth 
pair of cerebral nerves — just as we have seen of the stomach when 
vomiting is produced by tickling the throat. The reflected nerv- 
ous influence upon the nose produces an irritation like that occa- 
sioned by snuff, which, as in the case of the snuff (and as in that 
of the throat and stomach), is transmitted to the brain through the 
sensitive fibres of the same nerve, where also, as in the case of 
the snuff, the nervous influence is again developed and reflected 
with a spasmodic effect upon the respiratory muscles — which 
consummates the act of sneezing. 

Now the Mind will occasion exactly the same paroxysm of 
sneezing by dwelling intensely upon a former paroxysm, whether 
produced by snuff or by the sun's light. In this case the Mind 
develops the nervous influence by its direct action upon the 
brain (as we have seen of vomiting occasioned by disgust), and 
this influence is transmitted to the lining membrane of the nose 
in the same manner as when developed in the case of the sun's 
light, and the subsequent steps in the process are the same ; the 
rationale being the same throughout as when an emotion of dis- 
gust produces vomiting. When, also, irritations of the lining 
membrane of the nose from any cause occasion a tendency to 
sneeze but fall short of the full effect, it is a familiar experience 
that the Mind may readily determine the paroxysm by turning 
the attention upon the nose, and thus co-operate with the physical 
cause in developing the requisite nervous influence ; just as has 
been stated of partial sea-sickness. 

The olfactory nerve, or nerve of smelling, is only sensitive to 
odors. The odor of tobacco impresses this nerve, while its ir- 
ritating effect is exerted upon the foregoing nasal branches of 
the fifth pair of cerebral nerves. Nor do odors affect the nasal 
branches, unless they be at the same time of a pungent nature ; 
and then it is the pungency, not the odor, that operates, while the 
odor is discerned by the olfactory nerve. This pungency may 
give rise to sneezing, in which the Mind may have no other par- 
ticipation than what has just been stated. But odors may give 
rise to vomiting, as well as to pleasurable sensations, by impres- 
sions alone upon the nerve of smelling, and here the Mind is 



52 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

alone interested in developing the nervous influence. Even the 
odor of a rose, although at first pleasurable, is followed immediate- 
ly in some constitutions by a sense of Disgust, so that through the 
action of this emotion upon the brain a disturbing influence may 
be transmitted to the heart, or stomach, or even to the intestines. 
The heart may be thus depressed in its action, the stomach nause- 
ated, and the bowels have been moved by the same cause. Hence 
the Poet's expression — to " die of a rose in aromatic pain." But 
there is no other poison than the Mind in the case. It is the Mind 
that kills, and not the odor; and the Mind is here as much a sub- 
stantive agent as arsenic in other cases. 

Our subject abounds with examples parallel with the foregoing. 
Sympathetic yawning on seeing another yawn, sympathetic mic- 
turition, and sympathetic vomiting are, equally as the foregoing, 
mental results, and receive the same explanation. Even the rec- 
ollection of any of these occurrences may bring on one or the other, 
according to the one which may occupy the Mind. 

Thus, then, in all the foregoing examples the only apparent 
difference between the physical and Mental causes, so far as effects 
are concerned, consists in the self-acting nature of the latter. The 
Mind, the nervous influence, and the physical agents, are all 
on a par, in principle, as it respects their character of substan- 
tive causes in relation to effects, while, also, the Mind in all cases 
of true Sensation is acted upon through the impressions made 
upon the brain, and thus itself brought into action. This, how- 
ever, and whatever I shall have said of the correspondence of 
mental and physical effects, is only a limited view of their coinci- 
dences. The Mind, being connected with the body and acting as 
the exciting cause of voluntary motion, and taking cognizance of 
the impressions transmitted to the brain by the organs of sense, 
should form, also, one of the ordinary stimuli of the involuntary 
organs, or such as are concerned in the great processes of life. 
And so we find it, affecting those involuntary organs, through its 
various Emotions, even after the manner of morbific and curative 
agents. It has been said — " Cheer up the patient and he is sure 
to get well," while, on the contrary, a sober countenance of the 
physician may determine his case fatally. In the Institutes of Med- 
icine I have a chapter upon the "Influence of the Mind upon the 
action of Kemedial Agents," in which this subject is variously 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 53 

exemplified. An Author of the olden times, writing in the palm- 
iest days of ignorance, but not with any reference to our subject 
but to the cure of diseases, though not of the professional corps, 
in one of his sallies upon the vagaries of philosophy, let slip a 
bolt which demolishes every fabric of materialism. 

"All the world knows," he says, " there is no virtue in charms ; 
but a strong conceit and opinion alone, which forceth the humors 
(moral ones), spirits, and blood, which takes away the cause of 
the malady from the parts affected. The like we may say of our 
magical effects, superstitious cures, such as are done by mounte- 
banks and wizards. An empyric oftentimes, and a silly chirur- 
geon, doeth more strange cures than a rational physician. Ny- 
mannus gives a reason ; because the patient puts his confidence in 
him, which Avicenna prefers before art and all remedies whatso- 
ever. 'Tis opinion alone, saith Cardan, that makes or mars phy- 
sicians; and he doeth the best cures, according to Hippocrates, in 
whom most trust. So diversely doth this phantasie of ours affect, 
turn, and wind, so imperiously command our bodies, which, as 
another Proteus, or as a chameleon, can take all shapes, and is of 
such force, as Facius adds, that it can work upon others as well 
as ourselves. How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause 
the like affection in another? How does om man's yawning 
make another yawn ? One man's p — ing provoke a second many 
times to p — ? Why does scraping of trenchers offend a third, or 
packing of files ? Why do witches and old women fascinate and 
bewitch children, but, as Wiarius, Paracelsus, Cardan, Miraldus, 
Yalleviola, Yannius, Campanella, and many philosophers think, 
the forcible imagination of the one party nerves and alters the 
spirits of the other ? Nay more, these effects of the imagination 
have led many into the delusion that they can not only cause and 
cure diseases, maladies, and other infirmities, by this means, as 
the great physician Avicenna supposeth, in parties remote, but 
move bodies from their places, cause thunder, lightning, tempests ; 
which opinion Alkiadus, Paracelsus, and some, others approve of; 
so that, I may certainly conclude, this strong conceit or imagina- 
tion is astrum hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which 
reason should steer, but overborne by phantasie, can not manage, 
and so suffers itself and this whole vessel of ours to be overruled, 
and often overturned." — Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621. 



54 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Before proceeding farther with our demonstration, it is well to 
keep in view the physiology which connects the manifestations 
of physical and mental causes acting upon the nervous system. 
We have seen that the principle is exactly the same, whether im- 
pressions made directly upon the brain by mechanical or other 
physical means give rise to motion in parts that are voluntary or 
involuntary, or whether the impressions upon the brain be occa- 
sioned by influences transmitted to it from remote parts, and 
which, by reflections of the nervous influence thus excited, equal- 
ly give rise to motions. In all these cases the resulting motions 
are involuntary, as in all other cases except such as arise from the 
action of the "Will. But in the case of the direct impressions it is 
particularly important to remember that the motions which are 
produced by the Passions and other analogous affections of the 
Mind are essentially involuntary, and, therefore, so far exactly 
coincident with such as arise from irritating the brain mechan- 
ically, or by the application of alcohol, tobacco, &c, and, by my 
demonstration the same, also, as any reflex movements that arise 
as the effects of impressions transmitted from distant parts to the 
great nervous centre. 

It is readily seen that a common philosophy must interpret all 
the foregoing effects. The fundamental cause is the same through- 
out. It is everywhere the nervous influence ; but what strange 
variety in the remote exciting cause ! Let us also observe the 
parallel which exists between the determination of the nervop 
influence by the Will upon particular muscles, according to its 
own choice, and thus constantly passing over, or isolating, all 
other motor nerves, or yet more remarkably, sending its influ- 
ences through certain branches of a compound nerve, which is 
distributed to various parts, and holding in passive subjection all 
the rest, and the parallel effects of those physical agents which 
we have seen to extend their influences specifically to the nerves 
of respiration, as in cases of vomiting produced by physical causes 
and by Mental Emotions, which avoid all parts but the stomach 
and certain voluntary muscles, and which, therefore, like the Will, 
elect and avoid the nerves without reference to their order. This 
astonishing phenomenon, than which there is nothing in nature 
more 'wonderful and paradoxical, or evincing more a most con- 
summate Design, is perpetually in progress in health among all 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 55 

the organs of life; and when we consider, also, how the well- 
trained juggler brings into simultaneous action almost every 
voluntary muscle, and each one in obedience to the foregoing 
law of elective influence, we shall readily comprehend how phys- 
ical agents, applied to the brain or to the stomach or the nose, will 
in the former case affect in a direct manner, and in the latter by 
reflex nervous action, certain parts only of the complex organ- 
ism ; nor shall we fail of realizing through these coincidences 
the relation which the Mind bears to the physical causes as a 
substantive, self-acting, absolute Agent. The same rule, precisely, 
applies to the various intonations of voice, and to such as form 
the melody of song, whether in man or birds. Each one, every 
variation, whatever the succession of change, is determined by 
an act of volition, rousing and determining the nervous influence, 
with all the rapidity and mutations of thought, with varying in- 
tensity, and incalculable changes of direction, and compounded in 
an endless manner, upon those muscles which are the immediate 
instruments of the vocal apparatus. Consider, too, how the Mind 
is simultaneously employed in analyzing the diverse and compli- 
cated parts of elaborate musical compositions, that every minute 
part may be delivered over to the Will with a precision that shall 
harmonize with the most delicate instrument of music, and con- 
sider, also, how thousands of individuals may concur together 
with a corresponding harmony ; and, while thus contemplating 
the subject, raise in yowr own mind the interrogatory — whether 
it be possible, in conformity with what you know of matter, that 
all this is elaborated, adjusted, consummated, by a mere organized 
compound of the elements of matter. And consider, as you pon- 
der upon these things, how exactly the Will graduates the force 
of every muscle which it brings into action — varying through 
every imaginable degree from the slightest touch to the death- 
struggle of the warrior. Observe, also, how the Will may be so 
roused by the Passions as to determine the most violent and un- 
steady movements, while at other times it holds the same Pas- 
sions in subjection. 

The Eational Faculties may give such a determination to the 
Will that the latter may appear to have obtained an ascendency, 
and to hold the former for hours in some abstract process, or tu- 
multuous passion will settle down into tranquil submission. But 



56 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT; 

. all this involves the simultaneous concurrence, or the primary 
operation of Judgment and Keflection. All the edicts of crim- 
inal legislation, all the Divine Commandments to abstain from 
evil, are predicated of the influences of this property of the Mind. 
And so, also, the Will is often concerned along with the Passions 
in determining the influences through the facial nerve that give 
rise to all the variety of physiognomic expressions that are inci- 
dent to the Passions and Mental .Emotions, or the Emotion or 
Passion may alone institute the same, or, more remarkably, the. 
Will alone may imitate all this variety of facial movements and 
expressions. And here the reader should not neglect the close 
analogies which we have seen to result from the operation of 
physical agents applied to the brain, and with all the force of a 
mathematical demonstration. And yet we shall ultimately see, 
when I come to the abstract consideration of materialism, that all 
these wonderful phenomena are ascribed, by writers of vast influ- 
ence, simply, either to molecular chemical forces, or to a combus- 
tion of the elements of the brain, or a process of secretion. 

Sensation supplies a means of demonstrating the existence of 
the Soul as a substantive, self-acting Agent. The physical im- 
pressions transmitted by the senses to the brain call the Mind 
into action, and Sensation is the result. This Sensation then be- 
comes a cause of other mental operations through which our 
knowledge is rapidly multiplied. If, then, in this mode of ac- 
quiring knowledge physical impressions upon the brain are neces- 
sary to bring the organ into a condition to elaborate ideas, it 
equally follows that there must be some corresponding exciting 
cause to originate those actions of the brain which contribute to- 
wards those mental processes which are entirely independent of 
sensation. There must be, I say, a cause as distinct from the 
brain to bring the organ into action in forming the ideas and ac- 
quiring the knowledge which have no connection with the senses, 
as the physical cause is necessary to the ideas and knowledge 
which result from sensation. And how does Memory recall 
these sensations at its pleasure, even years after the original phys- 
ical causes have ceased to operate ? Materialism answers, through 
pictures of the primary' impressions that are indelibly stamped 
upon the brain. Granting this assumption to be true, there must, 
of necessity, be something to select the precise ones from the 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 57 

millions of others, and in all their distinct individuality, and ren- 
der them the subjects of renewed contemplations, and the re- 
newed sources of new ideas and advancing knowledge. 

The foregoing relation of Sensation to our demonstration will 
be farther considered when I come to the special doctrines in ma- 
terialism. In the mean time, I may not neglect saying that, while 
the senses, through influences transmitted to the brain, call the 
Mind into action, they afford another very Blear demonstration 
of an absolute distinction between the brain which receives the 
impression and that Something by which the impression is recog- 
nized. It is this: A conflict often arises between the ideas that 
are excited by the sensitive impression and other ideas which 
had been antecedently formed, and in entire independence of 
sensation. The sensation, for example, invites us to some sen- 
sual indulgence, but an opposite set of ideas resists the tempta- 
tion ; and this conflict between the ideas of sensation and those 
which are independent of the senses, are as lasting as the life of 
man — the triumph of the one illustrating the Godlike endow- 
ment of Eeason, that of the other the ascendency of animated 
matter over the Divine attribute of Mind through the intimate 
relation of the former to the latter. 

It appears, from what has been now said, that the coincidences 
in results of irritations of the brain by mechanical and other 
physical means with such as follow the action of the Will, Mental 
Emotions, and Sensations, and the coincidences of these results 
with such as are brought about by reflex nervous actions aris- 
ing from irritations transmitted to the brain by parts remote from 
the organ, and a general concurrence of the coincidences through- 
out, as to a manifest cause irritating or otherwise exciting the 
brain, as well as a general coincidence in all the results, form the 
groundwork of my demonstration. 

When speaking of the Passions and Mental Emotions as ele- 
ments of the Mind, and as producing involuntary effects, I desire 
to be critically understood that it is not intended to be implied 
that they are not more or less associated with acts of intellection, 
and, perhaps, always brought into operation by some act of the 
Mind properly so called. This is also doubtless true of the Will, 
which appears to depend more or less upon the previous exercise 
of reflection, comparison, and judgment, in man, but roused into 



58 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

action in greater independence in animals — that is, instinctively. 
This remark may apply also to the Understanding, which belongs 
to animals as well as to man. If, however, the Passions, Emo- 
tions, and the Will be the results of intellectual processes in man, 
the former, by their great variety and their peculiar operation 
upon the organs of organic life, while the Will and all the higher 
Faculties of the Soul are excluded from that department of life, 
and the sameness %f the Will, throughout, in principle and re- 
sults, evince an individuality that renders them equivalent to 
elements or properties of the Soul and Instinctive Principle. 

So profoundly do the Passions operate upon the heart and 
stomach that certain philosophers have permitted their imagina- 
tions to surmise that they have their origin in those organs ; and 
in a popular sense the heart is considered the seat of the Passions, 
while such is their effect upon the heart the Holy Scriptures 
speak of that organ, metaphorically, as being the Soul itself. But 
even the foregoing localization of the Passions could not divest 
them of an intimate relation to the Mind, which must take the 
initiatory step of bringing them into action ; while others, like 
Van Helmont, suppose the existence of a Spiritus Archcena, an im- 
material principle located in the upper orifice of the stomach, to 
which the work of life is consigned. These opinions, however, 
are entirely wanting in the necessary facts, and I return to such 
as are sustained by an endless variety of phenomena ; and here 
we find not only the Soul and Principle of Instinct enthroned 
upon the great centre of the nervous system, but that the Will and 
the Passions are as precise and peculiar in their manifestations, 
and refer themselves as clearly *to the Mind as any of its admitted 
faculties, and their results are far more strongly pronounced. They 
must, therefore, be taken as equivalents, and as the only philo- 
sophical or practical ground of discussion. Indeed, in the prog- 
ress of our inquiry it will probably become evident to many, if 
not to all, that the Will is a distinct faculty of the mind. 

But the question which is thus raised, in anticipation of any cav- 
illing, has no bearing upon our demonstration. It is equally un- 
important whether the Passions and the Will be distinct elements 
of the Soul and Instinctive Principle, acting independently, or 
summoned into operation by the higher faculties, or whether they 
be, respectively, the results of the concurrent action of those fac- 



DEMONSTKATION OF THE SOUL. 59 

ul ties. In the latter- case they would be regarded in a collective 
sense ; and as the results are the same as if they were distinct 
entities, and entirely different from other manifestations of the 
Mind, they are as properly designated by the specific names of 
the Passions and Will, and the former resolved into Love, Hatred, 
Grief, Anger, &c, as any of the Faculties upon which they may 
be supposed to depend are known by other names. They may be 
called mere emotions ; but still they would belong to mental proc- 
esses, and that is enough for all the purposes that can bear any 
relation to physiological inquiries, or to our present objects. It 
would be, indeed, equally to our purposes were it conceded that 
the stimulus which gives rise to the Passions emanated from 
other organs than the brain, since they operate through the me- 
dium of the nervous system, are under the control of the Will 
and Judgment, and are palpably associated with them either as 
co-ordinate elements or as resulting emotions. They are, there- 
fore, as much dependent upon the brain, and the brain is as 
necessary to them as it is to the Will and Perception. Any 
fancied remote stimulus upon that hypothesis would simply 
rouse the Mind into action, like any remote cause operating upon 
the organs of sense. The conclusions, therefore, which I shall 
have predicated of the Passions and Emotions can not be affected 
by any hypothesis of a metaphysical nature, nor by any sup- 
posed involutions of other organs with the brain in the produc- 
tion of their phenomena. Moreover, it may be added, that be- 
sides the faculties of Perception, Understanding, and Memory, we 
meet with little else in the animal tribes but the manifestations 
of the Will and Passions ; and, therefore, in all the animal king- 
dom, with the exception of man, the mental principle appears to 
consist mainly of those elements. 

Having thus disposed of the foregoing question relative to the 
Passions to meet the subtleties of the speculative philosopher, I 
shall now interrogate more particularly the physiological facts as 
to the individuality of the Will as a property of the Soul and In- 
stinct, when it will be found that it is in no respect the same com- 
plex emanation of either as the Passions. It is not obedient to 
any analogous laws, nor does it operate through the same mech- 
anism as the Passions. It is distinguished from the Passions by 
the simplicity and precision of its results, by its great final cause, 



60 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT, 

by its operation upon the organs of j,nimal life, and through the 
cerebro-spinal system, while the Passions, so far as they affect 
the organization, operate mostly upon the organs of organic life, 
and mostly through the sympathetic nerve. In all these respects 
the Will is on common ground with Judgment and Keflection, 
while it is the most important and uniform characteristic of the 
Instinctive Principle throughout the animal tribes. 

The Passions, like the Will, exert, also, remarkable influences 
upon the superior intellectual faculties; and this consideration 
allies them as closely as the Will with Judgment, Keflection, &c, 
and, I may add, the Will and the Passions reciprocally influence 
each other. It is well said by the Kev. Dr. Watts, in his work 
on the Passions, that — "While we inhabit this sensible world, and 
are united to flesh, the Passions were given us to assist the feeble 
influences of our Keason in the practice of duty for our own and 
our neighbor's good. Eeason is too often carted away from a 
due attention to a present necessary idea by many sensible ob- 
jects ; but Passion serves to fix the attention. Eeason is too 
slow, and too weak, to excite a sudden and vigorous activity in 
many cases; but Passion is sudden and strong for this pur- 
pose ;" " though it must be confessed, in our fallen and degraded 
state, the Passions often prove our snares and our torments." 
lie would also "abolish and root out such Passions as Pride, 
Malice r Envy, and Eevenge, as of no use, and never belonged to 
man in his state of innocence" — which may raise the question 
whether they were not originally ingrafted upon the Mind, but 
to be held by the Will in a subdued condition till tempted by 
the forbidden fruit? 'Our author goes on to say that — "Fear, 
Anger, and Sorrow, and some other troublesome Passions, are de- 
signed to secure us from evil ; # while the pleasing affections, such 
as Hope, and Love, and Joy, may be usefully indulged. This life 
without them would be a listless dullness and a heavy burden." 

From what has been said of the ground of my reasoning, you 
perceive the consequences which must logically follow. You 
clearly discern the force of the analogy between the effects of 
those elements or emanations of the Mind — the Will and the 
Passions — and of mechanical and other physical causes acting 
upon the brain. You see distinctly. that if the brain be influ- 
enced by Something when jjhysical agents acting upon it give 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 61 

rise, in consequence, to motion in the voluntary muscles, and in 
the heart, blood-vessels, stomach, &c., so must it be equally in- 
fluenced by Something, and that Something must be equally 
an exciting cause when the Will gives rise to voluntary motion, 
or when the passions affect the action of the heart, and produce 
blushing, or pallor, or contortions, or other movements of the 
face, or excite vomiting, &c. But in all tjaese latter cases that 
Something must be of a self-acting nature, since there is nothing 
but itself to bring it into action. Or, in the more specific phrase- 
ology of the Chemical School of Life, if the mechanical or other 
physical agents applied to the brain occasion certain physical 
changes in the organ which are supposed to produce the same 
phenomena imputed to the independent action of the brain, then, 
I say, there must be equally a cause for the supposed chemical 
changes in the latter case, and this cause, according to the evi- 
dence of the effects, can be nothing else than a self-acting agent, 
while in either case the assumed physical changes would be 
merely consequences of the exciting causes. 

The only apparent difference, in our comparative observations 
of the effects of the Mind and of physical agents upon the brain, 
is that the mind moves itself while the physical causes are brought 
into action by the motive power of the Mind operating upon the 
voluntary muscles of the hand that applies them. From the 
exact identity of effects in the two cases there must be an anal- 
ogy among their causes and modus operandi; and therefore the 
Soul and Principle of Instinct are as much distinct causes as are 
the mechanical or other physical agents which determine the cor- 
responding movements. 

In instituting parallel examples in the results of the action of 
the Mind and of physical causes upon the brain, it is evident, from 
my premises, that if the movements which are excited by the 
action of the physical causes upon the brain be only remotely 
due to those causes, and not to any primary, independent molecu- 
lar changes in the brain, it must equally follow that the effects 
of the Will in developing voluntary motion, and of the Passions 
in modifying the action of the heart and blood-vessels and other 
organs, can not be due to any original, primary molecular changes 
in the brain, as supposed by Materialism, but, of necessity, to 
some cause as distinct from the brain as are the physical. But 



62 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

as this is the great point in materialism, and forms the chemical 
and molecular doctrine of intellection, let us admit that the effects 
brought about in remote organs by physical impressions upon the 
brain are due to simply some physical change in the organ, and 
that, therefore, the corresponding manifestations of the Will and 
the Passions are equally owing to simply physical changes in the 
great nervous centre, it will still follow just as logically that there 
must be in the latter case as much an efficient cause for the cere- 
bral changes as there is allowed to be in the former. 

So far, then, the analogy is complete. But in the case of the 
physical agents, they are, as I have said, of a passive nature, and 
require other agencies to bring them into operation. How differ- 
ent, on the other hand, with the Will and the Passions ! Here 
the causes are entirely self-acting, originating their own actions in 
the Sensorium Commune. This, in itself, establishes a radical 
distinction between the nature of the Soul and Instinctive Princi- 
ple and of all physical causes, and is utterly fatal to materialism. 
The self-acting nature of the Soul and Instinct transcends greatly 
the Principle of Organic Life, which requires the operation of 
stimuli to rouse it and maintain it in action. Nay more, the Will 
and the Passions are among the most efficient causes in calling 
into action the Principle of Life, or whatever power the Material- 
ist may prefer as the cause of organic actions ; and being in this 
respect upon common ground with all vital stimuli, the Material- 
ist will see in this analogy an insuperable proof of the substantive 
existence and self-acting nature of the Soul, and how, also, the same 
analogy distinguishes the Soul completely from the Principle of 
Life, or the Materialist's substitute of a correlated external force. 
The group of facts is here so very comprehensive, and so very 
demonstrative of the two most important problems in intellectual 
and organic philosophy, that I shall again return to the subject. 
(See Correlation and Conservation of Forces, Chap. VI.) But I may 
now say, that, so far as action is immediately concerned in the two 
cases, an analogy obtains, and we may reason upon that analogy 
from the self-acting Soul to the existence of an active Principle of 
Life upon which the organic functions depend. But we shall 
seek in vain, throughout the wide range of nature, for any di- 
rect similitude with the manifestations of Reason or of Instinct; 
though, if we "look through Nature up to Nature's God," we 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 63 

discover in the results of Creative Energy that analogy with the 
acts of the Soul which shadows forth the "Image of God." 

Let us now summarily review a few of our principal facts 
which establish the substantive existence and self-acting nature 
of the Soul and the Principle of Instinct. We have seen an ani- 
mal whose brain was shocked by a blow or irritated mechanic- 
ally, and spasms followed in the voluntary muscles ; and you see 
that the Will is even capable of imitating the convulsive affec- 
tion. Here is another whose brain is irritated by the application 
of alcohol, and you see the heart beating more actively as an im- 
mediate result; and here is a third, whose heart is as quickly en- 
feebled in action by the application of tobacco to the brain, just 
as it is excited by joy and anger in the one case, and depressed 
hy grief and fear in the other — and, in either case, as the emo- 
tions subside in the one, or as the alcohol or tobacco are washed 
from the brain in the other, so will the heart speedily resume its 
wonted action. You also witness the same spasms in the volun- 
tary muscles from the operation of the Passions and Emotions as 
arise from the mechanical causes when affecting the brain. 

But let us rather extend our illustrations by new examples. 
Consider, for instance, a paroxysm of Hysteria, where convulsions 
of the voluntary muscles are brought on by some mental irrita- 
tion, and where they are exactly the same as when disturbing the 
brain mechanically, or when hysteria arises from irritations trans- 
mitted to the brain from distant parts. The Will has mimicked 
the same results in such perfection as to have often deceived 
astute physicians. Consider, too, how greatly analogous are these 
mental displays, whether voluntary or involuntary, to the con- 
vulsions that proceed, through reflex nervous actions, from teeth- 
ing and intestinal troubles; and associate with them what we 
have seen of the exact similitude of the voluntary and involun- 
tary acts of respiration, one of them being determined by the di- 
rect action of the Mind upon the brain, and the involuntary act 
by an impression transmitted from the lungs to the brain — ac- 
cording to explanations already made. How precisely the same, 
also, the involuntary contraction of the sphincter ani and its con- 
traction as effected by the Will, and where the same philosophy 
applies in respect to causation as in the involuntary and volun- 
tary acts of respiration. That is to say, the sphincter muscle is 



6i PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

held in permanent contraction through an irritation unceasingly 
transmitted from the part with which the muscle is associated to 
the spinal cord, and the nervous influence thus excited and re- 
flected upon the muscle, while the Mind may at its pleasure in- 
crease the contraction. The example is very direct and em- 
phatic in establishing as clearly a remote cause (the Will) of the 
action of the brain upon the muscle in the voluntary act, as of 
the spinal cord in the involuntary (the irritation transmitted to 
the cord) — since, if such a cause be necessary in the latter case, it 
must be equally so in the former. Consider, also, among the in- 
exhaustible examples, the analogous effects which result from 
the operation of an emetic and a blow upon the head, the vomit- 
ing produced by either cause being the result, as hitherto ex- 
plained, of an irritation of the brain, and you witness precisely 
the same effect from Disgust, and even from its reflection. But 
vomiting is not the only coincidence between the physical and 
mental causes. We often see them simultaneously with the 
vomiting, and through the same nervous influences, bathing the 
whole surface with perspiration ; pouring the saliva from the 
mouth ; breaking down a tumultuous excitement of the heart 
and arteries, besides other effects which it would be superfluous 
to mention ; and compare many of these results with the effects 
of Fear — the bounding action of the heart, the small and rapid 
pulse, the half-suspended respiration, the pallor of the skin and 
the copious perspiration, the flood of urine, the hurried move- 
ments of the intestine, the ghastly countenance and the frightful 
eyeballs, the trembling of the voluntary muscles and the prostra- 
tion of their power; — or, compare the results of many physical 
causes, such as constipation of the bowels, with the effects of 
Grief, either of them so influencing the brain as to undermine 
digestion, or so acting upon the brain as to overthrow the mental 
faculties ; — or, consider how Hope, succeeding to Grief, will, like 
tonics, cathartics, shower-bath, change of air, &c, influence the 
nervous centres in yet other ways, so as to restore that digestion 
which Grief had impaired. And what makes the tears flow, 
when Grief, or Love, or Joy, or Anger, is in the ascendant, just 
as they do when snuff or other physical agents irritate the nose ? 
Why does "the mouth water" at the sight. of a bountiful feast, 
or on scenting its odor, or from the clattering of dishes, or from 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 65 

its expectation alone, just as it will on chewing horse-radish or 
tobacco ? Why will offensive odors, or startling, or other of- 
fensive sounds, so affect the Mind as to operate upon some after 
the manner of cathartics ? And, as affirmed by Shakspeare — 

"Others, when the bagpipe sings in the nose, 

Can not contain their urine for affection. 
Masterless Passion sways it in the mood 
Of what it likes or loathes." 

The philosophy of this is analogous to what I have said of the 
physiology of light in producing sneezing; with the exception 
that, in the case of the bagpipe, an emotion of the Mind co-oper- 
ates with the sound in developing the nervous influence ; while 
in that of the light in sneezing, if it fall short of the effect, the 
Mind, by reflecting upon the irritation of the nose, may determine 
the paroxysm by its deliberate action, or may reproduce it, as we 
have seen, without the aid of any physical cause. And farther 
as to offensive sounds, it is related by Dr. Fairfax, that — " Mis- 
tress Eaymond, whenever she hears it thunder, even afar off, be- 
gins to have a bodily distemper seize her. She grows faint, sick 
in her stomach, and ready to vomit. At the very coming over 
of the thunder, she falls into a downright cholera, and continues 
under a violent vomiting and purging as long as the tempest 
lasts. And thus hath it been with this gentlewoman from a 
girl." — JSTow the foregoing diuretics, emetics, and cathartics are 
Mental Emotions, and have their analogies in the shops of the 
Apothecary. Again, cold, suddenly applied to the surface of the 
body, is often a powerful diuretic, and, like the warm bath also, 
may as suddenly determine micturition as an act of the Will. 
The former phenomenon is the result of a complex process of re- 
flected nervous influences, while, as always, the Will operates 
in a direct manner. Moreover, in conjunction with the Will in 
determining micturition is the excreted fluid, whose irritation of 
the mucous coat of the bladder is transmitted to the brain, where 
it excites the Will into deliberate action, and co-operates with it 
in developing a nervous influence that is then projected upon the 
muscular coat of the organ and brings it into contraction ; which 
is equally true of all animals as of man. That same irritation of 
the mucous coat of the bladder also maintains trte convergent 
fibres of the muscular coat, which form the sphincter, in a state 

5 



66 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of permanent contraction by an unceasing determination of the 
nervous influence upon them — just as we have seen of the sphinc- 
ter ani. The contents of the organs in one case excite the nerv- 
ous influence, and the Mind in the other. Analogous exam- 
ples, as already stated, occur in voluntary and involuntary res- 
piration, swallowing, &c. It is also worth stating as a critical 
fact, that the Mind may hold in contraction either of these 
sphincter muscles, in opposition to violent irritations that may 
call for relief. 

Again, there is nothing more uniformly and powerfully diuretic 
than Fear, being, also, in its excessive operation, like emetics, &c, 
a powerful sudorific. Consider, also, a modification of Fear as 
showing the delicate shades of difference among the Passions, and 
how they correspond in their effect with those of physical agents. 
Thus Anxiety, which has fear for one of its elements, exerts also 
a like but modified effect. So, also, Jealousy, which results from 
the united operation of fear and love — as well expressed by 
Sappho — 

"In dewy drops my limbs were chilled, 
My blood with gentle horrors thrilled, 
My feeble pulse forgot to play, 
I fainted, sunk, and died away." 

And coming to the pure element, Love itself, we observe other 
coincidences with Fear, and with the effects of the physical agents, 
with which those of Fear coincide, especially as it respects per- 
spiration, and certain modifications of the heart's action, and of 
the respiratory movements. 

It is said by Eev. Dr. Watts, that — " In many of the Passions 
the sensations and motions of the Mind are so exceeding swift 
and momentaneous, they become so joined and complicated with 
each other, and they run so often into one another in an undis- 
tinguished mixture, that it is exceeding hard to give such an ac- 
curate and distinct account of the effects of all of them as one 
would desire." In these complicated cases, movements are roused 
in rapid succession throughout the voluntary and involuntary 
organs, and various physical products are also the resulting con- 
sequences — such as a flow of sweat, of saliva, of bile, of tears, 
of water, of Aucus, &c, just as arise from "undistinguished mix- 
tures" of active medicines. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 67 

In all the foregoing comparative examples it is palpable 
enough, that, in one series of the cases the effects are owing to 
some physical cause irritating the brain and spinal cord, and 
which is totally distinct and different from those nervous cen- 
tres ; and can any one be so regardless of the plainest rule of 
philosophy as to suppose that the corresponding results in the 
other series are not equally due to some cause which is alike 
distinct and different from those nervous centres? All of them 
are the most familiar facts that engage our attention ; but such 
as are relative to the Mind have engaged us only as facts. 

I now return to my statement relative to the nervous influence 
in pursuit of a common exciting cause by which all the endless 
but analogous phenomena to which I have adverted are brought 
about. It is readily granted that the mechanical and other ph} 7 s- 
ical causes applied to the brain are not transmitted to the remote 
parts which they influence through the medium of the nerves, 
and we must therefore look for some intermediate cause by which 
the remote effects are produced. It is of no importance to our 
present object whether this cause be galvanism, or a nervous 
fluid, or nervous power, or a vibration of the nervous fibres, 
&c. ; and from the analogy between the effects of the Will and the 
Passions, and those of the physical agents, it is equally clear that 
those attributes of the Mind are not transmitted to the parts af- 
fected, but that they must operate through the same intermediate 
exciting cause as the physical agents. These unquestionable co- 
incidences, therefore, not only place the external and internal 
primary causes upon common ground as substantive agents, but 
are demonstrative of their operations through some common cause 
appertaining to the nervous system. This is also farther sus- 
tained by the simplicity and consistency of Nature in her funda- 
mental institutions; especially where the mechanism is the same, 
although there be great diversity in the remote causes and re- 
sults. 

Here I might bring my direct demonstration to a close as it 
respects the substantive existence of the Soul, and its power of 
instituting actions in connection with the subordinate material 
fabric. But there may be some who may be inclined to follow 
me in a more extended inquiry, especially as the demonstration 
will continue to be predicated of admitted facts and principles. 



68 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

The variety of physiological exemplifications is far from being 
exhausted, and the plainest examples will be selected, that they 
may readily concur with the foregoing in enforcing the conclu- 
sions at which we have already arrived. Among them some of 
the most obvious relate to the respiratory muscles, which, as 
we have seen, are both voluntary and involuntary. Besides the 
diaphragm and intercostal muscles, those of the face belong to 
this series, although they do not participate in the ordinary acts 
of respiration. They are mostly subject to the action of the Will 
and Passions, while, as we have seen, the diaphragm and intercostal 
muscles are brought into motion by a remote physical cause in 
ordinary respiration, though the Will may occasion exactly the 
same movements, and, indeed, often co-operates with the physical 
cause in their natural function. But the muscles of the face are 
brought into action by the same remote physical cause as excites 
the diaphragm and intercostals in several modifications of res- 
piration ; some of which are natural, as in sneezing, coughing, 
yawning, laughing, and others more or less morbid, as asthma, 
hiccough, &c. In all but two of these cases (yawning and invol- 
untary laughing), the movements depend upon the excitement of 
the nervous influence through some sensitive nerve (generally 
the sensitive fibres of the pneumogastric nerve, as already ex- 
plained), and the reflection of that influence from the brain and 
spinal cord, through motor nerves, upon a part of, or upon the 
whole of, the respiratory muscles. In each modified process there 
is a special irritation of the nervous centres by the transmitted re- 
mote cause, and in each the nervous influence (or immediate ex- 
citing cause) is brought into operation by the transmitted remote 
cause in a peculiar manner, and according to that manner is the 
nature of the movement. In Asthma a stronger irritation is trans- 
mitted from the lungs to the brain, and a more intense motor ex- 
citement is reflected from that organ upon the muscles of respira- 
tion (often including those of the face) than in ordinary breath- 
ing, and not unfrequently the Will comes to the aid of the irrita- 
tion propagated to the brain from the lungs. Here, then, it is 
seen that the prompting of the Mind and the physical cause are 
brought naturally into immediate co-operation in rousing the 
action of the brain. The physical, cause is insufficient for the 
development of that nervous influence which is necessary to 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 69 

excite the requisite movements of the respiratory muscles, and 
therefore compels the Mind to lend its assistance. Both act in 
perfect harmony together ; nor can any difference be observed in 
the results of either (which, as we have seen, is also true of invol- 
untary and voluntary respiration), excepting as the Mind acts 
with greater energy in asthma than the remote physical cause, 
and brings the respiratory muscles of the face into action. 

Now, upon the physical hypothesis of the mental functions, 
what is it that superadds to the respiratory movements, in the 
foregoing case, a cause perfectly distinct from such as naturally 
governs the process? If it be said fluctuating conditions of 
the brain, what is the cause of those fluctuations ? Why, in the 
superadded voluntary effects, is there at one moment only a 
moderate degree of the supposed chemical or secretory process 
in the brain, and at the next a greatly increased amount of one 
or the other, and this requiring as much a cause as the excite- 
ment of the brain in the ordinary involuntary act? And here 
I may again advert to the sphincter muscles as supplying a par- 
allel example. Consciousness also decides the question in all the 
cases. 

Take another illustration — the acts of voluntary and involun- 
tary laughing. When the feet or arm-pits are tickled, laughing 
follows irresistibly in many, as the effect of an irritation trans- 
mitted to the nervous centres by sensitive nerves supplying 
the skin of these parts. The phenomena are the same as wit- 
nessed in ordinary laughing when the Will and agreeable Emo- 
tions are the exciting causes. Here are three distinct cases as it 
respects the nature of the exciting causes ; in one of which the 
Will may produce the phenomenon independently of an Emo- 
tion, or an Emotion may do the same in defiance of the Will, or 
the physical cause of itself alone and in spite of the Will. In the 
last case the sensation soon becomes painful, and then goes on in 
direct opposition to the Will. A man, for example, bound the 
limbs of his wife, and tickled her feet till she died of laughing, 
just as some die suddenly of a strong mental Emotion, " which," 
as Shakspeare says, "is as bad as to die with tickling." And 
here I would ask the Materialist what other construction he can 
apply to the cases of sudden death from Joy. and Anger than the 
powerful operation of some unseen cause upon the brain, and 



70 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

through that organ upon the organs of organic life? What other 
condition than a violent shock of the brain from a cause as distinct 
in its nature from the organ as the hammer whose blow upon the 
head is fatal through precisely the same 'physiological influences f 
The blow, also, upon the region of the stomach, and surgical opera- 
tions, which have destroyed life on the instant, operate in the 
same way as the paroxysms of Anger or of Joy, which have been 
as suddenly fatal ; only in the former cases the primary effects 
of the remote causes are transmitted to the brain from the injured 
parts, when they develop the same fatal nervous influence as is 
produced by the direct operation of the Passions. 

A case precisely parallel in its physiological rationale with 
death from Mental Emotions occurs in Syncope, when it arises 
from seeing or hearing something offensive. Here the immedi- 
ate cause, as in the case of death from Joy or Anger, is the in- 
stant and powerful determination of the nervous influence upon 
the brain, heart, stomach, &c. But there must be Something to 
develop that nervous influence in the brain, and the common 
sense of every one, even of the Materialist, assures him that it is 
a conscious, self-acting agent that does the work. But for a far- 
ther illustration of this subject, and to appreciate as well as we 
may the physiological relations of the Mind to the body in some 
of the minutest, involved, and wonderful details, let us revert to 
the physiological rationale of syncope, vomiting, &c, as produced 
by offensive sights, odors, and sounds, and by a recollection of 
their effects ; and analogous facts in relation to sea-sickness, &c, 
and many other parallel examples hitherto presented. And let 
us connect with the foregoing facts the syncope and vomiting 
which follow blows upon the head, and it will be seen, as plainly 
as we see that the physical blow upon the head is the cause in 
one case, that the Mind inflicts the blow in the remaining series, 
or that of joy, anger, offensive sights, odors, &c. The physio- 
logical effects prove conclusively, both in their nature and coin- 
cidence, that one cause is as much an agent acting upon the brain 
as the other, and that both are equally distinct from the organ. 
In all the cases where the physiological effects are consequent 
upon menial processes, the Mind and the effects stand in the same 
relation as do the physical causes and their effects in the other 
cases, and where, also, the effects are precisely the same in both 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 71 

series. To suppose the absence of an exciting cause acting upon 
the brain in the former series is a physiological absurdity, and to 
suppose any other primary cause than the Mind, or a Self-acting 
Agent, is a greater absurdity ; nor have I any doubt that the 
Materialist will finally come to this conclusion. Nay, more, the 
Mind, the brain, and cerebro- spinal nerves are absolutely nec- 
essary to all voluntary movements, as the brain is to all sensa- 
tion and ideas ; while the motions of the involuntary organs may 
go on with the aid only of the sympathetic nerves, as shown in 
monsters born without brain or spinal cord. Does not this, in 
itself, evince a cause appertaining to the brain for the fulfillment 
of those great purposes of life which distinguish man and ani- 
mals from plants, while no such cause is necessary to the organs 
which are designed merely for the support of the intellectual 
mechanism? If, also, the brain alone were the cause of volun- 
tary motion, why should not the heart, the stomach, and other 
involuntary organs be liable to such movements ? Why should 
there be any discrimination as to what muscles are moved, un- 
less directed by something different from the common medium 
through which the voluntary motions are effected, and with all 
the precision in the multifarious details of which I have hitherto 
spoken ? 

Again, in respect to offensive odors when they produce vomit- 
ing or syncope, the stomach being especially affected in the for- 
mer case, and the heart in the latter ; in the former the Mind may 
be more interested in the physiological effects than in the case 
of syncope from analogous odors, since the odors may be so far 
different in the two series that Disgust is in operation in one, but 
not in the other. A rose may occasion syncope when just 
plucked from the bush, but vomiting only when in a decaying 
state (page 52). The Mind, therefore, in the case of vomiting, 
is tributary, along with the physical cause, to the development 
of a nervous influence which is projected with a nauseating ef- 
fect upon the stomach, just as we have seen of sea-sickness, &c. 
(page 48). But, as has been stated, the Mind, by meditating 
upon the former effects of a disgusting odor, may alone produce 
vomiting or syncope. Sympathetic vomiting, on seeing or hear- 
ing another vomit, is mostly of this nature ; but here, too, as in 
the case of the odor, the Mind alone may determine an act of 



72 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

vomiting by simply reflecting upon a disgusting spectacle that 
had upset the stomach ; nor should we here neglect a reference 
to the parallel effect of emetics and blows upon the head. — But 
in the case of syncope as produced by odors, a different Emotion 
is brought into operation, which determines the nervous influ- 
ence with a depressing effect upon the heart, as when an infusion 
of tobacco is applied to the brain, and syncope follows. On the 
other hand, if the odor be of an agreeable nature, Joy is the re- 
sult, and this emotion occasions an excitement of the heart, as 
when alcohol is applied to the brain or ammonia to the nose. 

I have spoken of the physiology of involuntary laughing, in 
which the Mind has no participation, but where an irritation is 
transmitted to the brain from some remote part as the exciting 
cause of the nervous influence (page 69); and we may now 
look at the physiology of voluntary laughing, in which the Mind 
rouses the brain without the intervention of any other cause, and 
determines the nervous influence directly upon the muscles of 
the face, just as upon all the respiratory muscles in voluntary 
breathing (page 45); and which is also true of a Mental Emo- 
tion and the blood-vessels of the face in blushing, and of the pro- 
duction of tears in weeping. 

And so, also, of voluntary yatuning ; but in the ordinary or in- 
voluntary act, which is really a modified form of breathing, the 
Mind may have but little or no participation, but it may depend 
alone upon a physical impression transmitted from the lungs to 
the brain (page 68) along, perhaps, with a concurring sense of 
uneasiness propagated to the brain from the voluntary muscles; 
or, if the Mind participate, as in its efforts to relieve a sense of 
weariness, the physical and mental causes act in co-operation, 
just as happens in severe cases of asthma (page 68). At other 
times a very different chain of causation may be observed, and 
where, also, the mental and physical causes appear to identify 
themselves with each other, as in sympathetic yawning, where 
one yawns on seeing another yawn, or in talking about it; for 
in one case an irritation is propagated both to the brain and 
Mind through the nerve of vision, and in the other through the 
auditory nerve, and simultaneously the Mind conspires with the 
physical irritation in exciting the nervous influence and directing 
it upon the muscles of respiration. But a paroxysm of yawning 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 73 

may be readily consequent upon simply thinking about it, as may 
be the case with many on reading this statement; when the read- 
er will, doubtless, feel quite assured that his Mind, or something 
distinct from the brain, is as exclusively the remote exciting 
cause of the brain in this instance as the physical irritation of 
the organ commonly is in ordinary or involuntary yawning. 
Other illustrations to which the same explanation is applicable 
have been presented. 

What we have hitherto considered are plain examples among 
a multitude of analogous ones. But we must consider others less 
obvious, that Materialism may not oppose us with specious prob- 
lems in organic philosophy. It may be asked, for instance, 
"How will you explain the movement of the limbs during sleep, 
upon your doctrine?" The ready answer is, exactly upon that 
doctrine, since the facts are of the same nature with those already 
stated. In these cases the act may be either voluntary or invol- 
untary, or a union of both ; but throughout it arises from some 
impression made upon the nervous centres. Sleep may not be 
so profound as to suspend entirely the action of the Will ; or, in 
other cases the motion is owing, remotely, to some impression 
transmitted from the limbs to the nervous centres. Those re- 
mote impressions arise from some constrained position, or analo- 
gous cause, and may not awaken perception, or call the Will into 
exercise; though, doubtless, in most cases the Will is roused into 
action. If involuntary, the phenomenon is then coincident, both 
as to cause and effect, with the motions of decapitated animals, as 
when, for example, a decapitated turtle draws up its leg on being 
pricked, or as a bird flutters and runs on striking off its head. 
Here there is no sensation, no Mind in operation, and the nerv- 
ous influence .proceeds, of course, from the spinal cord alone; 
and the example is another clear illustration of the substantive, 
self-acting nature of the Mind. 

Let us now suppose that the Materialist will demand of us an 
explanation, upon our general facts, of the influences which are 
concerned in sleeping in the erect posture, which is common to 
many animals. The physiology of voluntary and involuntary 
respiration, and particularly the action of the constrictor muscles, 
and the exact coincidences between the voluntary and involun- 
tary' acts in either case, supply > respectively, an answer to the in- 



74 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

terrogatory (page 44). It is evident, therefore, that, in sleep- 
ing in the erect posture, the muscles of the limbs are placed by 
the Will in a state of tension, the influence of which is constantly 
transmitted to the nervous centres, where it as unceasingly ex- 
cites a nervous influence after the action of the Mind is suspend- 
ed, and which is reflected upon the muscles of the limbs with the 
same rigid effect as had been instituted by the Will, and in a 
manner similar to that which holds the sphincter muscles in a 
state of permanent contraction (pages 63, 66). 

The foregoing explanation is alike applicable to both the con- 
tracted and the extended leg of the bird in roosting. The whole 
principle, in all its variety of manifestations, according to the 
nature of the animal and the uses of parts, has its foundation in 
consummate Design. The modifications in different species of 
animals correspond with those of Instinct, and are full of instruc- 
tion to the contemplative mind. Their final cause belongs to the 
same inscrutable system of Designs as the varieties in Instinct 
itself; and if we may not trace out the exact mechanism, or the 
remote causes, in all the cases, there are a multitude of anal- 
ogous facts which have been clearly ascertained, and which as 
clearly interpret* the less demonstrable problems to every right- 
thinking mind. The route of the nervous influence among the 
organic viscera, and even among the voluntary muscles, is often 
eluding the knife of the anatomist ; and well may he sometimes 
despair of success, yet rest in the conviction that Nature operates 
by general laws, when he considers the fact that the Will deter- 
mines its influences upon whatever voluntary muscle it chooses, 
passing over many intermediate nerves, or electing one only, and 
far removed from its own seat of operations. And so shall he 
equally find it in organic life, where the Passions play their 
part, at one moment upon the heart, at another upon the skin or 
kidneys, or raise the blush of modesty in the blood-vessels of the 
face, or strike us dead in an instant. 

The foregoing instance of sleeping in the erect posture is one 
of the rare exceptions to the institution b}^ the Will of reflex 
actions, or in which an involuntary nervous influence is estab- 
lished by the Will and brings the strictly voluntary muscles 
into contraction ; and it forms a very critical proof that a self- 
acting agent is as much the cause of the voluntary act as a 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 75 

physical cause necessarily is of the involuntary. Yery similar to 
that are the spasmodic affections (particularly of the muscles of 
the lower extremities when rendered susceptible by disorders of 
the digestive organs) which arise from extending or "stretching 
the limbs," when in a recumbent posture. In these cases the 
Will is manifestly as much an originating cause of the nervous 
influence that brings the muscles into voluntary action, and as 
distinct from the brain, as that subsequent reflected impression 
upon the brain which determines the nervous influence upon the 
same muscles in an involuntary manner. 

If we now inquire into the remote and physiological causes of 
/Sleej), it will be seen that the Mind, through its property the Will, 
has often more influence as a remote cause than any of a phys- 
ical nature, and that the physiological condition of the brain, as 
the immediate antecedent of sleep, which is induced by the re- 
mote causes, whether physical or mental, can be only imperfectly 
understood ; although it consists essentially of some modifications 
of its relations to the Mind by which its co-operation with the self- 
acting agent is suspended, and thus places that Agent in a passive 
or dormant condition ; when the brain, being no longer excited 
by its associate Principle, not only recovers its normal state, but 
in failing, through its quiescence, to act upon the voluntary mus- 
cles, the entire body enjoys the same restoration. It should be 
observed, however, that it is a great mistake of Materialism to 
suppose that the organs of organic life are " exhausted," or even 
impaired in their wonted vigor of action, by the usual wakeful- 
ness and labor of the day. The exhausting influences fall upon 
the organs of animal life — the voluntary muscles, the senses, and 
the cerebro-spinal system ; though, when wakefulness is long 
protracted, an injurious influence will be more or less exerted 
upon the great vital organs, especially those of digestion, and 
this greatly through the depressing effects of the wearied Mind. 
But were there any foundation for Materialism, then should the 
great organs of life suffer from ordinary wakefulness in common 
with those of the animal group ; for then should the influences 
of the brain . be felt alike throughout the body — and this goes 
with the rest in proving that it is something besides mere brain 
that wearies the animal organs. 

Different hypotheses have been offered in explanation of the 



76 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Physiology of Sleep ; but none of them includes the Mind as a 
remote cause of the supposed condition of the brain. The opin- 
ion which has most commonly obtained among physiologists, 
and one of the oldest, supposes that a turgescence or distension 
of the blood-vessels of the brain and their consequent pressure 
upon the organ is the cause of sleep.* But more recently an 
exactly opposite doctrine has appeared, which refers sleep to a 
diminution of blood in the brain as the immediate cause, and a 
loss of material sustained by the brain and all other organs dur- 
ing the active condition of the Mind as the remote cause; though 
the doctrine supposes, also, that any other remote cause which 
may l'essen the quantity of blood in the brain may induce sleep. 

However much certain modifications of the physiological con- 
dition of the brain may be necessary to sleep, it is not less certain 
that sleep may be induced by a variety of remote causes which 
have no relation to the supposed wasting of the tissues of the 
body as a remote cause. The Mind itself is constantly tributary 
to the production of ordinary sleep. It is through this influence 
of the Mind, also, either in its independent agency in inducing 
sleep, like remote physical causes, or in its co-operation with 
those causes, that we obtain another demonstration of the substan- 
tive existence and self-acting nature of the Soul and the Principle 
of Instinct. 

Let us look, in the first place, at the Mind as a concurring 
cause of sleep when not the inevitable consequence of protracted 
wakefulness or of bodily fatigue. As ordinarily obtained, it is a 
matter of familiar experience that immediately before laying the 
head upon the pillow there is no apparent tendency to sleep ; but 
as soon as the recumbent posture is taken sleep may follow on 
the instant, although that very position increases the volume of 
blood in the vessels of the brain. What, then, is the immediate 
cause of this sudden transition ? Certainly not a diminution of 
blood in the brain, or other physical causes alone, for they had 

* Dr. Hartley employs his celebrated doctrine of nervous vibrations (of which 
more will be said hereafter) in interpreting the philosophy of sleep, as also dreams, &c. ; 
and here we meet, as an important element, with compression of the brain by disten- 
sion of its veins, which is supposed to arrest the nervous vibrations or oscillations; 
though he allows that the accumulation of blood takes place during sleep, and of 
course, therefore, is not a cause but a consequence. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 77 

manifested no such influences before the Will had determined 
upon sleep. But it is manifest that some cause of very decided 
and rapid action has contributed powerfully to the result — ap- 
parently not unlike the blow upon the head, or the respiration 
of ether, which suddenly occasions stupefaction. What cause, 
then, so obvious as that self-acting one which had suddenly de- 
termined upon sleep ? This, therefore, is the philosophy of the 
subject. .As soon as the recumbent posture is taken, the Will 
brings itself into decisive exercise, withdraws its action from the 
voluntary muscles and senses, and, above all, lays a restraint 
upon all the other intellectual functions, or, in popular phrase, 
" calls in the wandering thoughts," subdues the agitating pas- 
sions, and then, in great consistenc} 7 , leaves them at rest. The 
physical condition of the brain and of the senses and voluntary 
muscles, induced by other causes, often greatly facilitates these 
achievements of the Will ; or, after long wakefulness or great 
bodily fatigue, the physical causes alone may bring on sleep, and 
that, too, in spite of the Will to the contrary. So powerful, in- 
deed, is the Will in its tendency to maintain the brain in the con- 
dition necessary to wakefulness, and such are the frequent mo- 
tives for its unceasing and energetic action, it would have been 
a fatal defect in design had not the brain been so constituted that 
other causes should render it obtuse to the action of such a rest- 
less element of the Mind whenever demanded by the exigencies 
of the body. 

But again, when the Will is not prompted to action by other 
mental elements, or by sensation, &c, it assumes a passive condi- 
tion as it respects the body ; and then there may be no necessary 
agency of physical causes, external or internal, in the production 
of sleep, but the unaided Will may bring about the result. This 
is also a common experience ; for who has not nodded his head 
under an act of volition, for the simple purpose, perhaps, of 
"whiling away time," or for gaining time in anticipation of a 
night's watching ? Having no other occupation, so quickly and 
powerfully operative is the Will in this respect, that it may bring 
about sleep with great instantaneousness. 

Again, there are certain external physical causes whose tribu- 
tary influences in producing sleep are scarcely appreciable — such 
as the bubbling of a stream, lullaby music, rocking the cradle, 



78 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

combing the hair, &c. In these cases the physical influences 
transmitted through the nerves. to the brain make a direct im- 
pression upon the organ that immediately predisposes to sleep ; 
but the very slight impression is mostly instrumental in calming 
the Mind, and thus arresting its exciting action upon the brain. 
This rationale applies, also, to the drowsiness incident upon dull 
reading, " dull sermons," proverbially, and even reading upon 
solemn subjects that completely engross the Mind, when atten- 
tion languishes in the one case, and does not return to other sub- 
jects in the other; and thus the Mind soon ceases its actions 
upon the brain, and sleep follows as a consequence. 

The part, therefore, which the Mind takes in producing sleep, 
or in contributing with other causes, devolves upon the Will, 
which operates by holding other properties of the Mind in sub- 
jection and ceasing its own influences upon the body ; while the 
concurring external physical causes, of whatever nature, divert 
the Mind from its wonted operations, and also reduce the irrita- 
bility of the brain, and thus lessen or arrest altogether the action 
of the Mind upon its organ. It is in this latter way that soporif- 
ics, such as opium, &c, taken in moderation by the stomach, bring 
on sleep. 

Thus the Mind being put at rest, it becomes almost a logical 
consequence of the inaction of a cause of such unceasing and 
powerful operation npon«the brain in its waking hours, that the 
circulating mass of blood within the organ should undergo dimi- 
nution ; and hence it is equally as logical that the diminished 
circulation is the consequence, and not, as has been supposed, the 
cause of the cessation of mental action, however much it may sub- 
sequently contribute to the dormant state. Indeed, the most un- 
favorable position for a diminution of blood in the brain is the 
horizontal posture; and there can be no doubt that there is an 
increased determination of blood to the brain on assuming that 
position ; and it is for this reason that the most efficient means 
of removing syncope incident upon the abstraction of blood is 
that of laying the body horizontally. 

Now all this relative to sleep has its deep foundation in De- 
sign ; so indispensable is sleep to the general economy of the en- 
tire mechanism of man and animals; though the Will has a much 
greater agency in its production in the former than in the latter, 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 79 

on account of the differences in their mental constitution and the 
resulting influences upon the brain and general organism of one 
or the other, and which will be rendered more intelligible when 
I come to the consideration of those differences under the subject 
of Instinct. There is often in man a profound involution of 
causes; but in no respect, as it relates to man, is Design so man- 
ifest and sublime, in the physiology of sleep, as in rendering the 
Will tributary, in a variety of ways, to that rest which it is main- 
ly instrumental in suspending. 

Of an analogous import to the physiology of sleep is the sub- 
sidence of suffering, both bodily and mental, under certain im- 
pressions made upon the brain, either by the Passions alone or 
in connection with the Will. Thus many will revert to their 
sudden relief from the toothache on learning the near approach 
of the dentist. Fear of the wrenching instrument has dissipated 
all pain almost on the instant. If, therefore, a physical cause 
acting upon the brain was necessary to the suffering, it must 
equally follow that some counteracting cause operating upon the 
organ was necessary to the relief. Analogous cases, in which 
Fear and other Mental Emotions are interested, have been al- 
ready presented, and others will readily suggest themselves. Of 
a somewhat different nature is the effect of " Perkin's tractors," 
amulets, the impostures of animal magnetism, clairvoyance, &c, 
which exert their effects in relieving pain or disease, through the 
Imagination and Hope, and are therefore inoperative upon ani- 
mals (see page 53). It is obvious enough, also, that Despair, 
Grief, Jealousy, are removed by the ascendant influence of Hope 
and the Imagination ; which, when considered in connection with 
our parallel examples of physical and mental causes, shows us 
that these conditions of the Mind' not only possess an individual- 
ity, but are operating causes. 

There remains now to be considered, in connection with the 
foregoing, the demonstrative proof of a Soul to be derived from 
human designs. We, therefore, depart for the present from our 
physiological ground. The proof from Design requires no elab- 
orate discussion, for a single example as simple as the pendulum 
of a clock, which associates itself with the Creator's Design of 
gravitation, comprehends the whole philosophy. I would com- 
mend this subject particularly to those who are incapable of ap- 



80 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

predating the necessity of a self-acting, originating cause in the 
inception of ideas, a cause wholly different in its nature from the 
organized conditions of matter. All human designs invariably 
ally themselves, in respect to their origin and mental execution, 
with the Designs of the Creator, and establish the certainty that 
the former originate in a self-acting, designing Cause precisely 
analogous to that of the Author of nature, and that if one be 
material or the result of matter, so also must be the other. As 
the premises are alike, the argument and conclusions must be 
the same in both cases. Those who subscribe to the materiality 
of the Creator necessarily suppose that matter is self-existent, 
which is equivalent to the rejection of such a Being. And, 
again, if it be admitted that the Creator has communicated with 
man, the conclusion is inevitable, that it is through the same in- 
tellectual medium that man is enabled to understand the com- 
munication, or that they have conferred with each other. 

Although the cultivators of the so-called "New Sciences" — 
the " Correlation or Equivalence and Conservation of Forces" Dar- 
winism, &c. — find it for their interest to deride final causes, and 
evidences of Design, and Natural Religion, it nevertheless remains 
as true as ever that there are "sermons even in stones." With- 
out this means of attaining a knowledge of the Supreme Being 
there would scarcely have existed among the heathen Philoso- 
phers a system of Theology far transcending that of the Material- 
ists who live under the Christian Dispensation — nay, nothing of 
their earnest belief in a Soul and its immortality; however much 
it may have been prompted by a consciousness of higher desti- 
nies, or a loathing of annihilation, which pervades the masses of 
the heathen world. Well, therefore, may the Materialist rejoice 
in his new-born doctrine of the Correlation or Equivalence and 
Conservation of Forces, and protest against "Natural Religion" 
and " Final Causes." But I would commend to his attention the 
opinion of Lord Bolingbroke, whose works were indicted by a 
Grand Jury as undermining Eeligion and morality. He may 
thus appreciate, at least, the toleration of his own times ; for this 
condemned Philosopher administers to the Materialist a lesson 
on the subject of Natural Religion after the following manner : 

" Natural Religion is that original Revelation which God has 
made of Himself, and of His Will to all Mankind, in the consti- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 81 

tution of things, and in the order of His Providence. Whatever 
is there revealed is within the reach of our faculties; and the 
same reason which. He has given us to improve the physical, He 
has given to improve the moral system of our lives." " What 
we see of Him within the extent of our horizon we see clearly." 
Let us be just to Lord Bolingbroke ! 

But perhaps you answer that Bolingbroke was "a condemned 
criminal," and therefore an unreliable witness in behalf of his 
own innocence. Take, then, the infallible testimony of the great- 
est Physicist, of whom it is said that — 

' ' Nature and all her works lay hid in night, 
God said — 'Let Newton be!' and all was light." 

And Newton responded — "De Deo ex phasnomenis disserere ad 
philosophiam naturalem pertinet." Literally translated — " Look 
through Nature up to Nature's God." 

Let us, however, in all fairness, contrast with the foregoing in- 
ductions a fundamental corollary of the " New Philosophy," as 
promulgated by BtiCHNER in his renowned work on Force and 
Matter, and admire the forbearance of the present age when com- 
pared with that which dealt its blows upon Lord Bolingbroke. 
Thus Biichner — " Nature exists neither for Eeligion, for moral- 
ity, nor for human beings, but it exists for itself. What else can 
we do but take it as it is? Would it not be ridiculous in us to 
cry like little children because our bread is not sufficiently but- 
tered?" And, again, Biichner rejoices — "When the Emperor 
Napoleon asked the celebrated astronomer, Laplace, why there 
was no mention of God in his Meclianique Celeste, he replied — 
1 Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.' " And he quotes an- 
other authority, Lalande, as saying — "I have searched the 
heavens, but have nowhere found the trace of a God." And 
Comte exclaims — " The heavens declare no glory but that of 
Newton and Laplace !" When Newton was listening to a dis- 
paragement of the Bible by the great Halley, whom Lalande 
regards as " the greatest astronomer of England," he simply an- 
swered — "Ah! Dr. Halley, you must not pronounce judgment 
upon that Book, for you have never read it." 

These are illustrious men, employed with the infallible de- 
cisions of mathematics, and who laid the foundations of astro- 

6 



82 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

nomical science. Nay, more ; they illustrate the divinity of the 
human Mind, and may not be employed by the adversary in 
opposition to it. How, then, shall we explain the difference of 
opinion between them and him who apostrophizes — "An unde- 
vout astronomer is mad" — for madness will not interpret the 
enigma? 

Let us then leave the more simple, but magnificent designs of 
Earth and the Heavens, and turn our analysis upon Organic Na- 
ture, and here we shall almost see the Creator in Propria Per- 
sona — see His Creative Energy delegated to a system of designs 
which reach far beyond the compass of the human understand- 
ing, but as far as it can reach, sees nothing but the elaborate De- 
signs of an Infinite Mind ; in many of which the human Mind 
is deeply interested along with those which relate to the body. 
Indeed so profoundly is this the case in the organs of animal life 
(the senses and voluntary muscles), that those organs would be 
completely useless without the self-acting Agent. And although 
every part of the living being is distinguished by the most won- 
derful specific designs, many of which involve the operation of 
the Soul and Instinctive Principle, and all these incalculable de- 
signs concur together in one universal design of carrying out the 
well-being of the individual, yet those in relation to the Imma- 
terial Agent are so strongly marked as exceptions to the or- 
gans of organic life (as in the foregoing examples), as to con- 
found, at a glance, the doctrines of materialism — whether in re- 
spect to the Soul and Instinct or an active Principle of Life. 
And in close affinity with, this subject let us ponder upon the 
wonderfully complicated mechanism for the perpetuation of liv- 
ing beings, constituted upon the same fundamental plan through- 
out the entire animal and vegetable kingdoms, and where every 
detail of the apparently endless variety evinces the highest order 
of Design, while the united whole is as much beyond the com- 
pass of man's imagination as the relative distances of the Earth 
from the remotest stars ; and let us reflect upon what is here su- 
peradded, both in animals and plants, to the simply organic life 
of plants, as the organs of that life form the substratum of the 
designs that have been substituted for the original act of Crea- 
tive Power. Marvellous peculiarities or modifications obtain in 
the fundamental plan in the different species. How wonderful 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 83 

throughout all the mammiferous tribes the corresponding func- 
tion of lactation, and in every species a provision that shall meet 
the precise exigencies of the offspring, however numerous or 
solitary, and nothing in excess; and all this set in operation, in 
every individual, at the critical juncture when independent life 
begins ; while equally throughout the oviparous tribes either the 
Instinctive Principle takes the place of the lactiferous function, 
and prompts the animal to supply its progeny from the external 
world ; or, in the descending scale of animal beings, we meet with 
as precise an adaptation of external agencies for the development 
and nourishment of the new being, where they are verging 
closely upon those provisions that are ordained for the corre- 
sponding exigencies of the vegetable embryo. The parental feel- 
ing which prompts the animal to provide for and protect its off- 
spring is a part of the same great system of Design. 

In the early times it was not unusual, in the absence of better 
light, for the anatomist to derive his convictions of a Personal 
God from dissections of the animal body. Such, for example, 
was true of Galen. Paley reasons from the mechanism of a watch 
to the necessity of its origin in a designing Mind. But what is 
a watch compared with the mechanism and all the surrounding 
circumstances of that institution for the perpetuation of man, ani- 
mals, and plants, which has just been considered? But that 
wonderful provision is simply an isolated, dependent part of the 
organic mechanism — in no respect necessary to the life of the in- 
dividual. How incomprehensible, therefore, must be that manifold 
complexity of designs upon which the sexual system is merely in- 
grafted. If, therefore, the mechanism of a watch be due to the 
contrivance of an intelligent Mind, with how much greater cer- 
tainty do the organization and functions of animals and plants 
evince their origin in an Intelligence inconceivably exalted above 
that of human reason. Such, then, being our premises, it follows, 
as irresistibly, that the Mind which originated the design of the 
watch is precisely of the same nature as the Designer of organic 
mechanism and its manifold uses, and therefore that the Soul of 
man is as much a substantive self-acting Agent as the Great Creator. 

The Infidel, however, will admit of no such parallels; he never 
alludes to the designs which make up the whole fabric of living 
beings, and from which all their functions result; whilst he is 



84 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

constantly invoking, as we shall have occasion to see, the mech- 
anisms of art as supplying examples of force similar to that which 
animates and governs the living being, and from which all intel- 
lectual and instinctive manifestations arise — but never referring 
to the mechanism of art as demonstrative of design, much less of 
a Creative Mind. Of this I shall have something farther when I 
come to the materialistic aspect of the organizing endowment of 
the forces of inorganic nature. 

But I might have started, in presenting the foregoing display 
of Omnipotent Design, with the embryo from which all animated 
nature has proceeded since it was spoken into being in a state of 
full development — not even the vegetable world excepted; for 
with wonderful consistency with the creation of man and animals 
in a state of maturity, and as indispensable to Unity of Design 
and to the exigencies of animal life, it is affirmed that — " Every 
plant of the field was created before it was in the earth, and ev- 
ery herb of the field before it grew." There were, also, for like 
purposes, seeds in the earth ready for vegetation, as there were 
ova in animals ready for development* And here we come 
upon the amazing profundity of Design in the germs of all ani- 
mated nature — every germ embracing within itself the element- 
ary conditions, the potential whole of the complicated mechanism 
of every animal and plant, and which, as will be shown, is, alone, 
fatal to the developmental schemes of Lamarck, Darwin, &c. 
And who can contemplate without reverential emotion the prog- 
ress of development from the embryo state to the mature being 
— always in one preordained way, and that, too, with exact coin- 
cidence in every individual of the same species, but with certain 
modifications of the fundamental plan in every distinct species — 
while superadded to all this are the allotments of Instinct, with 
special modifications in every species, for the preservation and 
welfare of the animal ; while the Soul of man is designed not 
only for those purposes, but for others which shadow forth the 
Divine Mind. 

It is usual to set forth anatomical structure, and its general of- 

* In respect to the germs of plants and animals, respectively, it should be also ob- 
served that Design is rendered more conspicuous in placing seeds in the earth, inas-. 
much as they are of annual production only ; while the ova of animals are forever 
present. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 85 

fice, as forming the highest evidences of Design. But the uni- 
versal principles upon which vegetable and animal organization 
is founded, and the analogies throughout ; the special de'signs of 
every part, and their concurrence in the production of special re- 
sults ; the harmonious contribution which each receives from all 
the rest; the assemblage of the whole into one great universal 
design, by which the individuality of animal and organic life is 
constituted and blended together, so that the former is ingrafted 
upon the latter as an integral part ; the vast and exact variety in 
the physiological constitution of every tissue and parts of tissues, 
and, according to the nature of the species, with their correspond- 
ing products and their susceptibilities to the action of physical 
agents and mental emotions ; the almost endless and undeviating 
modifications of the organic products of every part, and accord- 
ing to the nature of the being ; the various and compound phys- 
iological influences which are often concerned in a common func- 
tion along with a highly complex mechanism, as in generation, 
respiration, vision, &c. ; the exact adaptation of the digestive or- 
gans and fluids to the varieties of food consumed by different 
species of animals, and the subordination of the whole mechan- 
ism to the exigencies and final causes of those organs — as seen, 
for example, in that profound labyrinth of organs, the urinaiy, 
intended for the elimination of redundancies of blood, and dis- 
charging them at convenient times from the body — the vital re- 
lations of atmospheric air and water to every individual animal 
and plant through a wonderful variety of mechanism and stu- 
pendous laws; the precise adaptation of Instinct to the special 
exigencies of organic and animal life in the various species of an- 
imals, with peculiarities in every species ; and, lastly, the involu- 
tion of the laws by which each part, and the whole in the con- 
certed action of all parts, are governed — all this forms a chain of 
evidence by which the advocates of the materialistic doctrines of 
Life and Mind, of spontaneous generation* and other develop- 
mental hypotheses, are shown not only to disregard an incalcula- 
ble amount of the clearest and strongest facts, but, in so doing, to 
reject the Divine Author of all things. 

* By spontaneous generation I mean the doctrine of the origin of living beings out 
of inorganic matter through its inherent properties and laws, or from some supposed 
existing organic matter under the influence of external physical causes. 



86 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Finally, we have seen that organic life is represented in the 
greatest simplicity in the vegetable kingdom, where, indeed, it 
constitutes the whole being. Ascending to man, we meet with 
the same fundamental condition, with certain organs and intel- 
lectual faculties ingrafted upon it, which are so impressive that 
they divert the attention from the fundamental, organic basis, 
and lead us to regard that condition as serving only as a basis to 
the superadded structure and faculties. And such, in reality, is 
the true relation in man of organic to animal life (page 36). 
The former would be worthless without the latter, and the latter 
would be useless without a directing Principle that shall adapt 
the whole mechanism to its endless relations to the external 
world, and to its own internal economy, and, therefore, a substan- 
tive, self-acting Principle. This is beyond any contradiction ; and 
therefore, I say, if the organic mechanism of man, and the animal 
fabric which has been ingrafted upon it, are merely designed to 
subserve some great purposes which have no intrinsic relation to 
the exigencies of organic life — either the life of the brain or of 
any other organ — it would be a violation of all the rules in phi- 
losophy and of common sense to deny that some efficient, self-act- 
ing Cause is provided to carry out the ultimate objects of such an 
elaborate system of physical designs, and where the manifesta- 
tions of such a Cause are without any analogies in the material 
world. The conclusion is also unavoidable that an organization 
which is so entirely abstracted in its fundamental economy from 
the operations of the rational faculty should be equally destitute 
of any allotment in generating its manifestations. But not ex- 
actly so in relation to animals, since they have other destinies 
than those of man, and therefore, for the fulfillment of those pur- 
poses, the Great Designer has rendered their animal mechanism 
and instinctive faculties mostly tributary to the maintenance of 
organic life and those other objects which are designed for the 
wants and happiness of the human race. The Instinctive Prin- 
ciple having no higher objects, it has been divested of those ra- 
tional faculties which are peculiar to man. But Instinct in animals 
has no more participation in the functions of organic life than the 
Soul of man. It is simply designed, as will be fully seen here- 
after, to provide for the wants of the animal and its protection. 

These distinguishing attributes in the philosophy of the or- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 87 

ganic and animal life of man, and bis associate tribes, are among 
the most impressive displays of Divine Wisdom (see organic and 
animal life, page 27). But before dismissing, for the present, 
this part of our subject, I would ask the Materialist whether he 
does not recognize in the ability of man to analyze the great 
Designs which make np the whole organic world, and to discover 
the complex relations of their integral parts, an Intelligence simi- 
lar to that which devised and brought the Designs into being? 
and whether, also, if the " Maker of the eye can see," the creature 
who sees does not see in the same intellectual manner as his Cre- 
ator, and therefore by a similar Rational Principle ? Such, also, is 
the correspondence in the philosophy of all designs that those 
which man originates require an Intelligence of the same nature 
as those which have emanated from Almighly Power. If, there- 
fore, the humble designs of man are the results of the operations 
of a material organization, so, equally, must be those which the 
Theist ascribes to Infinite Intelligence, and nothing, therefore, 
could have an existence but simple matter — at best in an organ- 
ized condition. From which it follows, as a logical sequence, 
that materialism, or a disbelief in the substantive existence of the 
Soul, involves the revolting doctrine of atheism. 

Or, how can any one be so untrue to his reason as to suppose 
that the displays of Design in living beings have sprung up spon- 
taneously from the elements of matter, of which there are not less 
than sixteen or seventeen in every animal and plant, or from a 
" cell" or any other " primordial form ?" The materialist assumes 
that the forces and laws of external nature could have started 
the animal into being, when he should know that those forces are 
destructive unless counteracted by a living organism. Or, if he 
begins with protoplasm, or a cell, or other primordial form, he 
should know that those forces, and all their attendant auxiliaries, 
could have never started the developmei^of a fully-formed ovum 
of any viviparous animal, much less have carried it forward to 
the stage of infancy. Those forces, and the matter with which 
they are associated, would immediately destroy the ova if sub- 
mitted to their action, or even if the ova be disturbed in their ma- 
ternal relations. Moreover, there is nothing but a Mature Par- 
ent that can nourish for a moment the newly-born mammiferous 
animal, or provide for unfledged birds; and the Physiologist should 



88 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

have known, also, that human parents, and all mammiferous ani- 
mals, and the forementioned birds, must have been created in a state 
of maturity both of body and Mind; since, I say, if they came into 
being originally even, in a state more advanced than infancy, 
but still dependent, they would have immediately perished from 
want of sustenance and protection. This would have been par- 
ticularly true of the human infant ; with no other instinct than 
that of sucking indiscriminately any object introduced within its 
lips, and of proclaiming its hunger or its sufferings by very audi- 
ble cries for relief — all of which will be fully submitted to the 
judgment of the reader at a more advanced stage of our inqui- 
ries. 

And here I should say, in consideration of thus presenting the 
foregoing as an original argument, that, so far as I have any 
knowledge, it was first employed by myself in my work on the 
Soul and Instinctive Principle in 1848, and again in my 
work on Theoretical Geology, 1856. Subsequently, M. 
Guizot, in LEgiise et la Societe Chretienne (1861), employs the 
same argument in relation to the human species, whence it has 
attracted the attention of others, particularly the Duke of Ar- 
gyll, in his work on The Reign of Law. 

I will now also inflict another blow upon Darwinism, and which 
will be farther considered in another place — that there is not, and 
never has been, an animal, however near its approximation to 
man, that coidd have conducted for a moment the care of a being so 
absolutely devoid of every rational, instinctive, and physical re- 
quirement for its own existence as the human infant — according 
to my former demonstration, in the works on the .Soul and In- 
stinct, and in the Institutes of Medicine. The facts are conclusive, 
and no one can resist their logic. The act of mature creation 
being thus demonstrated, whatever else is revealed in connection 
with the act must be received in an equally literal sense ; and I 
thus obtain, therefore, another proof of the substantive existence 
and self-acting nature of the Soul — made after the "Image of 
God." ISFor will I neglect reminding the Materialist that the 
same Eevelation informs us that the living body was supplied 
with a Principle of Life. I shall also show, in the sequel, from 
the Materialist himself, that this doctrine must be believed " if 
it be a consistent Eevelation to man." The Materialist, and all 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE SOUL. 89 

other doubters, confuted as to the creation of man in a state of 
maturity, can no longer cavil at the Narrative. 

As to the immortality of the Soul, it is, of course, insusceptible 
of demonstration; but the demonstration of its existence and pur- 
poses leave no doubt of its higher destinies. The objects of its 
connection with the body supply, alone, the highest probability 
that it is capable of an independent and immortal existence. 
These purposes, as we have seen, consist simply in connecting 
the Soul with the external world through the senses and volun- 
tary muscles, while it has nothing to do, in any functional sense, 
with the organs of organic life ; and which I have presented as 
a demonstrative proof that the Soul is a distinct Essence from 
the body — and farther, also, that it is totally wanting in plants, 
which are composed alone of the organs essential to life (p. 27). 
The analogy, however, as will be seen when I come to the con- 
sideration of the Instinctive Principle, can not be carried to ani- 
mals, as to the -immortality of that Principle, on account of the 
radical distinction between Eeason and Instinct; while, on the 
contrary, all that relates to the purposes of Instinct denote its 
perishable nature. As it is no part of my object to consider the 
metaphysical arguments in behalf of the Soul, I therefore avoid 
all of that nature in proof of its immortality. 

I shall now proceed to consider more specifically the material- 
istic doctrines, and reserve my farther demonstration of the In- 
stinctive Principle for the last, with the exception of the Appen- 
dices, in the sequence of my inquiries. But thus far a demon- 
stration of that Principle has been generally embraced in what 
has been said of the Soul. Still there remains much to be con- 
sidered of the analogies and distinctions between them. 



90 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 

What has hitherto been said is equally applicable to material- 
ism, whether it regards the manifestations of Mind as the result 
of a chemico-molecular action of the brain, or as secreted by that or- 
gan from the blood ; and these are the only hypotheses that have 
any intelligible foundation. It is now my purpose to consider 
them more specifically in their relation to causes. 

The molecular or chemical doctrine supposes that all acts of In- 
tellection, all manifestations of the Will and Passions, all the im- 
pulses of Conscience, and all the adoration of the Deit}^ are re- 
sults of "the chemical action which the elements of the food and the 
oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each other.'''' This is the hy- 
pothesis of "combustion," as laid down by Liebig, and as adopted 
by all chemical physiologists, and by all but a few materialists, 
who, however, often prefer the term molecular action to that of 
combustion. It is applied to all organic processes, to the func- 
tion of respiration, &c. ; and in respect to the brain it is regarded 
as the cause of mental phenomena, and of a waste, or " change in 
the composition of the substance of the brain" (Liebig). Carbon 
is the particular element which is generally supposed to be con- 
cerned in the process ; and this is said to undergo "combustion" 
by its union with another element, oxygen, and to thus result in 
the production of animal heat. This heat is the materialistic 
" correlated force," according to the prevailing doctrine, which 
gives rise to the phenomena of Mind. The author of the doc- 
trine in its essential feature, Baron Liebig, applied it to the pro- 
duction of heat throughout the body, and considered it the vital 
force; in which he is followed by the Correlators. He com- 
pares the body (the brain included) to a steam-engine, in its con- 
nection with the consumption of coal and evaporation of water, 
and says that — " The body, in regard to the production of heat and 
force, acts just like one of these machines." This illustration, to- 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 91 

gether with the entire hypothesis, has become a favorite with the 
materialistic school, and is often employed by them. Foreseeing 
its corrupting effects upon the whole domain of medicine, and 
that it was likely to become a basis for Mental Materialism, I de- 
voted to its special consideration, in the Institutes of Medicine, 
nearly twenty-five years* ago, more than seventy pages of that 
work (pp. 157-187, 234-279). Indeed, a few years before the 
appearance of Liebig's work (" Animal Chemistry"), in which the 
foregoing doctrines were extensively presented, there were such 
indications of their approaching invasions upon Physiology that 
I devoted an Essay to their consideration, under the designation 
of "Animal Heat," in the Medical and Physiological Commentaries, 
1840 (vol. ii., pp. 9-78).* 

As the foregoing doctrine of combustion, or " the chemical ac- 
tion which the elements of the food and the oxygen of the air 
mutually exercise on each other," is generally accepted as the 
basis of Materialism, I shall soon enter, in another chapter, upon 
its more critical consideration in connection with the arguments 
of its ablest advocates. The doctrine which ascribes the phe- 
nomena of Mind to the combustion of the Phosphorus of the 
brain, and which is peculiar to a few, is comprehended under 
the same general doctrine of chemical action. Nevertheless, in 
consideration of its "speciality," I shall bestow upon it some ap- 
propriate comments. It may be also said that the term " molecu- 
lar action," although less definite than " chemical action," or "com- 
bustion" means nothing else in the philosophy of chemical physi- 
ology or in materialism ; though it is unimportant to our demon- 
stration whether it do or not. 

It is my purpose at present to bring under a brief considera- 
tion more particularly the doctrine of 'mental secretion, which is 
less obvious than the chemical ; and what I may say upon the 

* Of that Essay it was said by the distinguished author of the " Climate of the 
United States and its Epidemic Influences" Dr. Forrey, in a review of the Com- 
mentaries, that — "Dr. Paine, it will be seen, in fact, anticipates the whole chemical 
theory- of Liebig as set forth in his ' Animal Chemistry.' This he has done not only in 
his work on the 'Philosophy of Vitality, and the Modus Operandi of Remedial Agents ' 
(1842), in which he controverts some of the German Professor's opinions advanced 
in the 'Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology ' (1840), but likewise in his 'Medical 
and Physiological Commentaries ' (1840), published before the appearance of either 
of Liebig's works." — New York Medical Journal, 1844. 



92 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

subject will be equally applicable, in principle, to the molecular 
or chemical hypothesis, and will cover the whole ground now 
under examination. So, also, will our specific facts to be yet 
presented against the rival materialistic doctrine apply with 
equal force against the doctrine of Secretion. This latter hy- 
pothesis has, however, comparatively few advocates with that of 
the chemico-molecular, and is not, of course, tolerated by its ri- 
val, although it has a better foundation in the analogies of which 
it is the offspring. i?Lmong its most distinguished advocates may 
be reckoned Cabanis, and at the present time, Carl Vogt. It 
simply supposes that "just as the liver secretes bile, so the brain se- 
cretes thought. 11 The assumed analogy, however, is totally desti- 
tute of foundation. It might be sufficient, in proof of this, to 
simply say that the Mind and Instinct are wanting entirely in 
every known attribute of the products of other organs, and that 
the former are sui generis in all their characteristics. But there 
are other more absolute distinctions which completely destroy 
the supposed analogy. What, for example, is the efficient cause 
of the production of bile, saliva, &c? Certainly, the blood, in 
connection with organic structure and organic actions — chemic- 
al, if you will. While these processes go on, bile, saliva, &c, are 
produced uninterruptedly; or, if arrested, it is from the failure of 
the organic processes. But it is just otherwise in respect to the 
Mind and Instinctive Principle. All their manifestations have 
completely disappeared during sleep, and often with great instan- 
taneousness (page 76). All the avenues to the brain through 
the senses are completely closed, all sensation suspended, during 
profound slumber; nor can it be doubted that such is the condi- 
tion of the brain itself in its relation to ideas. But to meet any 
sophistry about dreams, it will aid my demonstration to say that 
mental operations are only half suspended during sleep ; and yet 
the organic functions of the brain continue to move on as perfect- 
ly as those of the liver, the lungs, &c, while, also, its incidental 
influences upon the organic functions of all parts are in no re- 
spect affected. Indeed, were any change of this nature to befall 
the brain it would be particularly manifested by some consequent 
modification of all the organic functions. The undisturbed con- 
tinuance of all those functions and their products proves that or- 
ganic life is everywhere in perfect operation, while, by equality 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 93 

of reason, the suspension of all results in the organs of animal 
life proves that an Agent or Cause upon which the results de- 
pend, has ceased to operate. In one case organic functions, as 
well of the brain as of other parts, must go on without interrup- 
tion, and therefore the moving causes upon which they depend 
must be in perpetual action. Those functions and their results 
possess, also, great uniformity in the several organs respectively, 
whether in sleeping or waking. It therefore follows, as a neces- 
sary consequence, that the manifestations of Mind, were they the 
results of a secretory process, should sustain no abatement, but 
should be as unchangeable and as uninterruptedly in progress as 
the bile, saliva, &c; while the complete reverse of this is alone 
fatal to materialism, for precisely the same reasoning is applica- 
ble to the chemical or molecular doctrine as it respects the brain 
in its relations to other organs. In the case of the organs of ani- 
mal life, or those with which the Mind is concerned (the senses 
and voluntary muscles), it is ordained that they shall have peri- 
odical repose, and therefore, by parity of reason, their spring of 
action is constitutionally fitted for quiescence as well as action, 
and this, as it respects sleeping and waking, corresponds with the 
. alternations of thinking and not thinking during the waking 
time. The various gradations in the suspension of mental and 
instinctive functions, from their quiescence in the waking state 
to profound slumber, concur, also, in this part of our demonstra- 
tion. Nor is it at all important to my purpose whether there be 
a complete suspension of the intellectual or instinctive functions. 
Nay, more, for a very impressive argument may be nere drawn 
from the phenomena of dreams ; and this I shall do in the lan- 
guage of that eminent writer and enlightened physician, Sir 
Thomas Browne, as set forth in his Religio Medici, and which I 
place in the subjoined note.* 

* " I thank God," says Browne, " for my happy dreams as I do for my good rest. 
We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems 
to be but the waking of the Soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of Rea- 
son, and our awaking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleep. At my na- 
tivity my ascendant Avas the watery sign of Scorpius ; I was born in the planetary 
hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no 
way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of .company ; yet in one 
dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and 
laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my Memory as faithful as my 



94 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

But again : suppose some change in the organic condition of 
the brain as the cause of sleep ; what is it, I say, that so instantly 
reinstates its natural functions when we pass from the sleeping to 
the waking state? What rouses that organ to its wonted secre- 
tion of Mind, or what, in the other case, the special chemical or 
molecular process ? Certainly not the blood. Are there any anal- 
ogies supplied by the liver or by any other organ ? Do you as- 
sume, as is done by many, that some stimulus is propagated upon 
the brain by other organs? True, indeed; but in this perver- 
sion of a fact important in mere organic life, you betray a want 
of knowledge in the first principles of Physiology. Those influ- 
ences from remote parts, which I have employed in my direct 
demonstration of the Soul, have not the most remote connection 
with the phenomena of Mind, but. are wholly designed for the 
universal uses «of the organic mechanism in carrying on its or- 
ganic functions. The organs of life are in as uninterrupted prog- 
ress during sleep as in the waking hours, and are as perfect in 
the idiot as in the rational man. 

Thus, therefore, falls the only prop of materialism which it has 
fatally appropriated, in its consciousness that there must be some 
exciting cause acting upon the brain to bring that organ into 
action so far as it is concerned in the production of mental phe- 
nomena. But should Materialism assume that some imaginary 
stimulus, unknown to Physiology, is propagated upon the brain 
by distant organs, I ask, then, not only for the proof of this, but 

Eeason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also 
would I choose for my devotions ; but our grosser memories have then so little hold 
of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to 
our awakened Souls a confused and broken tale that hath passed." 

And thus Addison — a coincidence — "What I would here remark is, that wonder- 
ful power of the Soul of producing her own company in dreams. She converses with 
numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes 
of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actor, and the beholder. This 
puts me in mind of a saying which I am infinitely pleased with, and which Plutarch 
ascribes to Heraclitus, that all men, while they are awake, are in one common world ; 
but that each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. The waking man 
is conversant in the world of nature ; when he sleeps he retires to a private world that 
is particular to himself. There seems something in this consideration that intimates 
to us a natural grandeur and perfection in the Soul, which is rather to be admired 
than explained. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the Mind more play. 
The Soul seems gathered within herself, and recovers that spring which is broken and 
weakened when she operates more in concert with the body. " — Spectator, No. 487. 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 95 

what brings this remote influence into operation, either on awak- 
ing from sleep or under such an infinite variety of unique cir- 
cumstances during our waking hours ? Is there any conceivable 
analogy between such a cause, which is supposed to operate in 
the production of abstract ideas, in meditating, reading, writ- 
ing, talking, &c, and the impressions which come to the brain 
through the senses ? In what conceivable manner does such a 
cause modify the organic functions of the brain so as to excite 
the secretion of Mind, or how, in the other case, does it start the 
special chemical or molecular action upon which Thought is sup- 
posed to depend ; and how are these special organic processes of 
the brain to be harmonized with those other processes of the or- 
gan which result in the secretion of serum, and in nutrition and 
the corresponding waste of the organ? Do the functions of any 
other organ supply the slightest ground for such conjecture? 
Will it interpret the reason why sleep is so prolonged in the 
habitually indolent, or, contrasted with that, why the laborious 
and exhausted student often sleeps less than others, whatever 
their occupation ? Is it said that this is the result of habit, or 
of self-discipline ; then, in either case, it is an admission of a self- 
acting Principle which rouses the brain from its state of sus- 
pended animal functions. It is a case, too, very strongly to our 
purpose, for it denotes a remarkable cultivation of the spiritual 
part which enables it to spring into active operation from a dor- 
mant condition in habitually exhausted states of the body ; while 
the brain, according to materialism, should resist all wakefulness 
till that organ, and all other parts, are fully recruited by repose. 
But the Materialist is not convinced by the foregoing difficulties, 
although they command his acquiescence ; and again, therefore, 
I ask him what is it that directs the special molecular, chemical, 
combustive, or secretory process in all the acts of volition, in all 
the acts of intellection ; or what brings them into operation ? 

We have now seen by the foregoing, as well as by various 
other demonstrations, that it can not be the blood, or any other 
physical influence appertaining to the body, which brings the 
brain into action in contributing to the mental functions. The 
blood is an indispensable stimulus to the brain, as well as to all 
other parts, in maintaining the organic processes. These proc- 
esses and their results are without variation in the brain, as 



96 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

everywhere else, in the natural state of the body. Moreover, 
if the blood were an exciting cause of the alleged actions which 
are productive of thought, there should be a continuous stream 
of Mind, and this, too, as well in the sleeping as the waking state; 
just as much so as a continuous flow of bile from the liver. Nor 
should there be any greater varieties in the manifestations of 
Mind than in those of other organs, if the manifestations depend 
upon the brain itself. 

It is therefore variously demonstrable that the blood has noth- 
ing to do with the production of Thought as an exciting cause. 
But the common sense of all must perceive the necessity of some 
exciting cause, and that cause, too, of a self-acting, originating na- 
ture. It would be absurd to isolate the brain from all other 
parts, and make it the cause of its own actions as it respects the 
intellectual functions. That would be equivalent to a self-acting 
Soul without the co-operation of the material part ; and therefore 
a greater wonder than the doctrine of a self-acting Agent asso- 
ciated with the brain — nothing whatever to start the supposed 
cerebral movements, and least of all to expound their results in 
the precise, unique, and infinitely diversified phenomena of Mind. 

The necessity, therefore, of some self-acting cause, independent 
of the body, to bring the brain into action in the production of 
thought, becomes again, and again, a matter of clear demonstra- 
tion. And have we not an analogical proof of this in the blood 
itself? Why should there be a doubt in the presence of this 
analogy, sustained by an imperative philosophy, of some corre- 
sponding cause to institute those actions in the brain that are 
necessary to thought, but with the superadded endowment of 
originating and suspending its own actions ? This, indeed, is as 
demonstrable through the phenomena as the admitted fact that 
the blood is an indispensable stimulus to the organic functions 
of the brain, is itself acted upon by the organ, and appropriated, 
along with its phosphorus and carbon, to the nourishment of the 
organ and to its physical products. If, then, I say, such a fluid 
has been ordained either by God or nature for such a purpose, 
why should not One or the other have been sufficiently consist- 
ent to provide some special agent in connection with the brain 
for those functions which are totally different from its organic 
functions, which equally demand an exciting cause, and which 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 97 

have, demonstrably, no connection whatever with the blood as 
an exciting cause ? 

The doctrine of mental secretion has, as I have said, compara- 
tively few advocates with that of the chemical or molecular. The 
former, whenever it seeks for any other exciting cause, assumes, 
as we have seen, some impression transmitted to the brain from 
other parts. But of that I have disposed for the present, and 
what I have said in objection is alike applicable to the chemical 
or molecular ; and although this latter doctrine finds it conven- 
ient to look to other organs for an auxiliary cause, it supposes 
that some external force of nature, such as caloric, is the special 
cause which brings about those movements in the brain that give 
rise to the phenomena of Mind. But it is assumed that these 
forces of nature are essentially one and the same, and are mere 
"modes of motion ;" and it is farther assumed that there can be 
no Soul because such an existence is "inconceivable." But is it 
not more inconceivable that any external force should become 
the cause, through the medium of the brain, of the infinitely di- 
versified phenomena of Mind, to which there is nothing in the 
least analogous in the inorganic world, even if such a force could 
institute and suspend at pleasure its own actions in its presid- 
ing office over the intellectual functions? And then as to the 
"modes- of motion" — can any thing be more absurd than the 
supposition that an " external mode of motion" becomes so mod- 
ified in the brain as to undergo at its own pleasure the infinite 
variety of modifications that would be, necessary to the modifica- 
tions of the actions of the brain in generating the endless variety 
of mental phenomena? But suppose that caloric, or any exter- 
nal force, is of a material nature, the same objections equally ap- 
ply. It must be endowed with the self-originating power of 
bringing the brain into co-operation with itself, whether it relate 
to abstract processes of the Mind, or to the functions of the brain 
in its co-operative office of acting upon the voluntary muscles. 
The absurdity of supposing that such a cause could, of itself, in- 
stitute or suspend its action upon the brain is too obvious for 
farther comment ; and to surmise that some other unknown 
cause brings the physical force into operation, or suspends its ac- 
tion, equally involves the self-acting, originating, voluntary na- 
ture of that unknown cause. But such is ever Materialism. 

7 



98 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

And how, upon any other ground than that of an Agent per- 
fectly distinct from the brain, will you expound the improvement 
of the intellectual powers by the discipline of education ? You 
will not assume that it is the physical condition of the brain that 
is thus improved, any more than excessive quantities of food 
improve the organs of digestion. Indeed, as in the latter case, 
laborious study is liable to inflict injuries upon the brain. But 
if the organ can withstand the ordeal of great mental exercise, 
the final result is an immense gain to the intellectual powers. 
Moreover, the exaltations of the mental faculties being once estab- 
lished by education, they undergo no decline, although all farther 
means of improvement are discontinued. Is it the brain that 
has sustained this wonderful change, and which always remains 
at the ready summons of the Will ? Or is it caloric that has un- 
dergone the improvement? The whole body may be slowly 
wasted by disease, as in phthisis, and yet the Mind continue as 
vigorous as ever. Are there any analogies supplied in the least 
degree by other organs ? Can the liver be made to secrete more 
than its usual ratio of bile, and to maintain that augmented 
ratio ? It is, then, in whatever aspect regarded, something total- 
ly distinct from the brain which is improved by education. Nor 
is that all. If the brain be considered the source of thought in 
its organic condition alone, how are facts treasured up, and ever 
present, from childhood to decrepit age — often becoming more 
vivid as old age approaches ? As the brain, like all other parts, 
is constantly subject to renewals, the facts should go with the 
parts upon which they are supposed to be impressed, if the or- 
gan be alone their receptacle. The facts are a part of the organ 
itself, and can not, therefore, be transferred to the depositions of 
new cerebral matter. Why then, again, are the events of child- 
hood fresh to the octogenarian, when those of the day are quick- 
ly forgotten ? Why may Memory be trained with a special ref- 
erence to particular subjects, and to a forgetfulness of others, or 
disciplined to a general compass of knowledge? But the Soul, 
on the other hand, being of an unchanging nature, as also the 
Instinctive Principle (as proved by these very facts), holds fast 
the .treasury of knowledge or the improvements it may gain. 
And here we come to the demonstration, which, were there no 
other objection, would be fatal to materialism in either of its 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 99 

shapes ; for one hypothesis supposes that thought, &c, is the re- 
sult of a molecular or chemical action of the brain, and the other 
of secretion. In either case, therefore, all ideas should be as eva- 
nescent as the processes themselves. 

What, next, are jour conceptions of Creative Energy ? Are 
not, I repeat, the results of Mind, however separated from In- 
finity, precisely analogous to those which are everywhere seen 
as the offspring of an Infinite Intelligence? But if you admit 
a God, you will not reason from your debasing doctrines of the 
human Mind to the attributes of your Creator ? And I ask the 
Materialist what answer will he make as to the condition of our 
Lord before His appearance upon the earth, and as He was "man- 
ifest in the flesh?" Was there no Spirit there? Nothing but 
material eliminations of Mind from the blood, or " a molecular 
action of the brain," or a combustion of its elements ? For so you 
must have it, and so it is meant, where the same mental phenom- 
ena are so interpreted in man. 'Nay more, so complete is the 
analogy between the acts of Keason and those of the Creator, as 
seen in the humble designs which are devised and executed by 
man, and which, indeed, is all that we know of Him, except from 
Eevelation, it would unavoidably follow, upon the doctrine of 
materialism, that all the Designs of the Almighty Being are 
equally the results of a conflagration of carbon or phosphorus, or 
of some molecular action, or a secreted product of organic proc- 
esses ! 

The questions and arguments thus far propounded must be an- 
swered consistently, and in some conformity with the hypotheses 
drawn from analogy. If that can be done (the simple physiolog- 
ical requisite alone), then it must be conceded that the analogy is 
entitled to the gravest consideration. So, on the other hand, 
should the hypothesis fail in this indispensable requisite, Materi- 
alism must stand convicted of sophistry, insincerity, and atheism. 

We have still before us an extended consideration of the ma- 
terialistic doctrines ; but in accomplishing this it will be neces- 
sary to present the facts and the arguments of their leading ad- 
vocates, and I therefore admonish the reader that the discussion 
will necessarily become more or less controversial. 



100 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM, CONTINUED. 

I have interrogated extensively the phenomena of Mind in 
pursuit of a cause, whether, as it regards the apparent independ- 
ence of the body of all the complicated operations of Reason, or 
such as are more or less manifestly related to the senses, or in- 
volved in the inconceivable variety of voluntary movements as 
exemplified in the intonations of song, the modulations of speech, 
the influences of the Will in determining those precise motions 
by which the limbs are rendered instrumental in fulfilling the 
great objects of life both in man and animals, and the nature 
of which denotes a cause as originating, and as independent of 
the unvarying operation of the properties of matter or forces of 
nature, as Omnipotent Power. And with those problems of 
Thought and of the Will must be associated all the Passions 
and the minor Emotions — such as Love, Joy, Grief, Anger, 
Mirth, Sorrow, Revenge, Contempt, Hatred, Horror, .Pride, Hu- 
mility, Jealousy, Despair, Fear, Pity, Compassion, and other vari- 
eties of Sympathy, Love of Fame, of Music, of the Marvellous, of 
Notoriety, Avarice, Guilt, Curiosity, Astonishment, Respect, De- 
sire, Cheerfulness, Melancholy, Sense of Beauty, Sense of the 
Sublime. Sense of Virtue and Vice, Friendship, Feeling of De- 
light, Selfishness, Generosity, Emotions of Taste, &c, &c. 

Consider once more, and in connection with a more ample and 
critical detail, that every simple and complex idea, every act of 
the Will, every Passion and Emotion, every shade of variation in 
all this labyrinth of Mind, and whatever the rapidity and involu- 
tion of the phenomena, each and every one, every variation would 
demand, upon the hypothesis of materialism, as many modifica- 
tions, and as rapid succession of changes in the supposed phys- 
ical cause. Many Passions and Emotions, such as Grief, Melan- 
choly, Love, Jealousy, are often more or less in permanent opera- 
tion, so that there must be not only an uninterrupted and special 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 101 

chemical or molecular movement for each of the mental affec- 
tions, but other chemical or molecular changes must be occurring 
simultaneously as Season, Perception, the Will, &c, may come 
into operation, and without a conceivable exciting cause. 

Moreover, the various Passions and Emotions, which would 
severally require, in their general aspect, a special chemical or 
molecular action, are liable to great diversities, each one of which 
must have special modifications of the several causes respective- 
ly. Of the diversities and complexities, for example, of Gladness 
and Regret, Brown remarks, in his " Philosophy of the Human 
Mind" that — "If every thing at which, we rejoice and grieve, in 
the course of a single dajr, could be imaged to us at once — as we 
gather into one wide landscape the lake, and the vales, and the 
rocky summits, which we have slowly traversed — it would be 
one of the most striking pictures that could be presented of the 
social and sympathetic nature of man." Of the varieties of De- 
sire, he says there is — " 1st. Our desire of continued existence, 
without any immediate regard to the pleasure it may yield. 2d. 
Our desire of pleasure, considered directly as mere pleasure. 3d. 
Our desire of action. 4th. Our desire of society. 5th. Our desire 
of knowledge. 6th. Our desire of power, direct, as in ambition, 
or indirect, as in avarice. 7th. Our desire of the affection or es- 
teem of those around us. 8th. Our desire of glory. 9th. Our 
desire of the happiness of others. 10th. Our desire of the unhap- 
piness of those whom we hate." 

The materialist does not deny the necessity of a cause for all 
this diversity, this instantaneous succession of diversified move- 
ments, and resolves the problem, as we have seen, upon the same 
principles as he interprets the physical phenomena that are in 
progress throughout the body? So far the brain is constituted 
like all other organs, which, in the mature body, undergo waste 
in correspondence with, nutrition. But the Materialist super- 
adds to the "chemical or molecular" actions of other organs 
that result in waste, certain special ones to the brain for ex- 
pounding the phenomena of Mind. These special ones must 
also, and as he affirms, produce a waste of the organ; so that 
the two sources of waste would destroy all corresponding rela- 
tion with nutrition, and the brain should speedily come to an 
end. If the brain manifests any peculiarities of organic function, 



102 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

they are, equally with the organic physical phenomena of other 
parts, open to observation, equally depend upon manifest physic- 
al causes, and are equally governed by laws that are subjects of 
calculation. But how entirely the reverse of all this is whatever 
relates to mental and instinctive phenomena — every Thought, 
every act of the Will in its mental influences, or in those demon- 
strations it makes upon the voluntary muscles which I have so 
extensively considered. We seek for the exciting causes of the 
motions, the products, and all physical results of other organs, 
and we find them in the organs themselves; and herein the 
brain agrees with all other parts. But we seek in vain, among 
all these analogies, for any cause that will in the least explain 
the phenomena of Mind. The blood stimulates the heart, gland- 
ular organs, &c, and precise physical products ensue, and equally 
so in respect to the brain. There is no variation in causes or ef- 
fects; or if the brain, as I have said, exerts certain peculiar influ- 
ences upon other parts, they are purely of a physical nature, and 
are always the same under the same exciting causes, whether 
physical or mental. Now, therefore, since the strictest analogies 
obtain between the physical constitution of the brain and all oth- 
er parts, and there is nothing apparent as the exciting cause of 
mental phenomena, we must seek for a cause in the phenomena 
themselves; and it is here we discover in their very nature some- 
thing totally different from the exciting causes of the physical 
phenomena, since the latter are brought about by manifest phys- 
ical causes, while the mental phenomena as clearly depend upon 
a self-acting cause. 

If we ask the Materialist for the exciting cause of the supposed 
molecular action of the brain, to which all but the few of the 
school of mental secretion refer T;he manifestations of Mind, he 
either reiterates his assumed analogies or evades the inquiry by 
— "Science is satisfied with the molecular doctrine, but we do 
not know the Why;" and so also the few who advocate the doc- 
trine of mental secretion. In assuming the dependence of men- 
tal phenomena upon molecular movements in the brain, it is sup- 
posed that a precise, definite change is necessary to every partic- 
ular thought, act of the Will, &c. Professor Tyndall, in his Ad- 
dress at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science, at Norfolk, England, 1868, thus adverts to the doctrine: 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 103 

"Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular ac- 
tion in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the in- 
tellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which 
would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one 
phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do not 
know why. Let the consciousness of Love, for example, be as- 
sociated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of 
the brain, and the consciousness of Hate with a left-handed spiral 
motion ; we should then know, when we love, that the motion is 
in one direction, and, when we hate, that the motion is in the 
other — but the why ? would still remain unanswered."' — Norfolk 
(Eng.) News, Aug. 21, 1868. All that is very logical, and it is 
the principal object of this work to "answer the why?" 

It is conceded in the foregoing quotation that the materialistic 
philosophy necessarily requires a precise, definite molecular or 
chemical movement, or, if you please, " a right-handed or a left- 
handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain," for every 
thought, every simple and every complex Idea, everj^ Mental 
Emotion, every act of Yolition, and these movements must be as 
rapid, and as precisely simple or involved, as an idea may be sim- 
ple, or as the rush of thought sometimes amazes us with its ve- 
locity, or resolves the most profound problems with an instinct- 
ive perception. Examples of this nature come readily to my 
demonstration. Bat let us take one of the most remarkable, and 
I ask the Materialist whether he can suit his doctrine of a "pre- 
cise molecular action of the brain " to the exigencies before him 
— where, in a series of eighteen figures multiplied into eighteen, 
there must be a special, exact molecular action of the brain for 
the multiplication of each figure of one series into each figure of 
the other series, and as each is involved with the rest at every 
stage of the process, as much so as if only one figure were multi- 
plied daily. 

The illustration to which I refer is derived from a history, by 
the Eev. Mr. Stevens, of the early exploits of Truman Henry 
Safford, at present (1870) the Astronomer for the Observatory 
at .Chicago. It may be premised that, after a very superficial 
attendance at a country school in Yermont, with an attenuated 
frame and feeble health, this boy, at the age of nine years and 
six months, produced the "Youth's Almanac for 1846," having 



104 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

made all the calculations of eclipses, the rising and setting of the 
sun, &c, &c, without any assistance whatever ; and that in the 
thirteenth year of his age, and in the same unassisted manner, he 
calculated the orbit of the telescopic comet of November, 1848, 
and with an accuracy which is corroborated by the best astron- 
omers. At the age of ten years he was thoroughly examined 
by the Rev. Mr. Adams in algebra, plane trigonometry, mensura- 
tion of surfaces and solids, pyramidal and spheric, cube roots, 
&c. The problems were of a very difficult nature, resolved men- 
tally alone, and generally with great instantaneousness. I now 
come to the special illustration to which I have referred. " For 
the purpose of testing the reach of his mind in computation, he 
was finally asked to multiply in his head 365365365365365365 
by 365365365365365365. He flew round the room like a top, 
pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hand, 
rolled his eyes in their sockets, until, in not more than one min- 
ute, he said 133491850208566925016658299941583225; which 
was written down while being delivered. What was still more 
wonderful, he began to multiply at the left hand, and to bring 
out the answer from left to right, giving first 133491, &c, [which 
was contrary to the usual ' spiral movements']. Here, confounded 
above measure, I gave up the examination. This last perform- 
ance is not so interesting an illustration of the logical power of 
the child as others above given, but as a stupendous effort of 
computation it is absolutely inconceivable. We are impressed, 
indeed, with a sentiment of awe when we think what must be 
the power and fleetness of thought in the purely spiritual state, 
when such a child, by the mere accident of a peculiar organiza- 
tion, astounds us by such immeasurable compass and velocity of 
mind." — ISTor was this early display of mind limited to mathe- 
matics, but took, in almost equal compass, every department of 
science with which it came in contact; and whenever the object 
of inquiry related to the higher branches of mathematics he com- 
monly opened the works in their middle, and seized at once upon 
the antecedent premises upon which the inductions had been 
founded. 

I am now led to revert to what I have said in my direct dem- 
onstration of the Soul of the two orders of nerves, the sensitive 
and excito-motory ) the former of which is the medium through 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 105 

which the senses transmit their impressions to the brain where 
the influences terminate, while other impressions are transmitted 
to the brain from remote organs through other sensitive nerves 
and there develop the nervous power or influence, which is 
then reflected from the brain upon other parts through the ex- 
cito-motorj nerves, and brings those distant parts into motion; 
and we also saw that the Will and the Passions do the same by 
their direct action upon the brain without the intervention of the 
sensitive nerves, but through the motor nerves alone (pp. 37-40). 
In the first place, let us look at the now almost universal sub- 
stitution of the physical forces of dead, inorganic matter for a 
Principle of Life, and of which I shall have much to say when I 
come to the " Correlation of Yital and Physical Forces," as form- 
ing the present ground-work of mental materialism. And now 
I ask the materialist, the chemist, and the physical philosopher 
of life, to explain the mechanism of sympathy, or of those move- 
ments that are generated through the two orders of nerves, 
known as reflex actions (page 38), by the application of any 
principle in physics or chemistry. Let them, I say, consider 
that in every process of sympathy or reflex nervous action there 
are involved very diverse yet very precise effects, and that they 
must have one species of chemical change for the transmission 
of impressions through the sensitive nerves to nervous centres ; 
another for the impressions exerted upon these centres ; another 
for the reflection of the influences through the excito-motory 
nerves ; and yet another for the effects exerted at the ultimate 
destination of the amazing round of the never-ending influences, 
as indispensable, for example, to the process of respiration ; and 
coming to morbid states, there must be other series of chemical 
changes, conforming, respectively," to the nature of every morbid 
influence and product. Take any single attribute of the nervous 
system, and we shall find it as remarkably distinguished from all 
things else as is the mental principle, or this from the nervous 
influence. The physical power that appertains to that system 
is just as unique in all its operations. The distinction alone, in 
various aspects, between the condition of the sensitive nerves and 
those which are appropriate to the motor influence — those which 
transmit impressions to the central parts, and those through 
which the nervous influence is projected upon all parts of the 



106 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

organism — those, I say, which serve to awaken the Mind, or to 
stamp on the nervous centres, with all the precision of thought, 
an inconceivable variety of influences which are unceasingly in 
progress in every other part, but with no other appreciable re- 
sult than the movements which follow in all the organic func- 
tions, contrasted with the totally distinct prerogatives of those 
nerves, or those fibres of compound nerves which give rise to 
the distant movements and changes — place at an unutterable 
distance all analogy with the recognized forces of inorganic na- 
ture, and with every other agent in the external world. 

ISTor can we be surprised at the exquisite functions of the nerv- 
ous power and sensibility as appertaining to the nervous system, 
when it is considered that the same system is the medium of all 
the rational, voluntary, and instinctive acts, which transcend, im- 
mensely, any of those vital influences which I have set forth as 
its characteristics, and which harmonize so wonderfully with the 
rational and instinctive manifestations. And if we now bring 
the Mind into its relations with the nervous system, what can 
task the understanding more than the step in the process of in- 
tellection as connected with the functions of sense ; beginning 
with light and its properties, or with the odor which none but 
the dog can discern, distinguishing that which is impressed upon 
the footsteps of his master, or of a savage foe, from that of all 
other men, and that upon the track of one animal from all other 
animals, or the abstractions that convey to the mind all the va- 
rieties in taste, or the modified undulations of the air which ren- 
der so distinct from each other all the gradations in sound from 
the JEolian harp to the braying of a jackass ; the impressions of 
each undulation of light — seven hundred billions of the violet 
ray, and only less for all the rest, in a second of time — and of 
incalculable numbers in respect to the air ; the impressions, I 
say, of each undulation, or of the indefinable odor, upon the ex- 
tremities of the nerves of sense, one alone upon the eye, another 
alone upon the ear, and another upon the nose alone ; the trans- 
mission of these impressions along the trunks of the nerves to 
their other extremities in the brain ; their excitement of the 
brain, and the simultaneous operation of Eeason or of Instinct, 
by which the nature of the primary impression is discerned, and 
the external objects realized by the inward immaterial agent, ac- 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 107 

cording to their real material existence.* And if we now carry 
this philosophy one step farther, we shall be in the midst of that 
profound labyrinth of designs where the impressions upon all the 
senses meet harmoniously together — often simultaneously from a 
common source, as in the effects of gunpowder, on the discharge 
of a gun, upon every sense, when each impression transmitted' to 
the brain confirms the report of the others through that Percep- 
tive Principle which recognizes the exact amount, individually, 
or any discrepance of the whole. -Or, through what other imag- 
inable principle can it be that sounds, odors, &c, are unnoticed 
when we are intently engaged with subjects in which the senses 
are not interested, yet exert their full force on the instant that 
the abstract occupation ceases ? 

I may next interrogate the Materialist as to what gives rise 
to the Consciousness that all intellectual processes, all the acts of 
the Will, originate in a self-acting agent? He is silent under the 

* As the chemical interpretation of the various sensations has become incorporated 
with physiological science, I may here refer the reader who may be disposed to in- 
vestigate the subject to an attempt of this nature in the Institutes of Medicine, pp. 
90-95. I "will also farther say, that the only exposition of the process which has 
been made that is at all intelligible is relative to vision, while the other functions of 
sense are left to be expounded by that philosophy. But it will be readily seen that 
each of the senses is distinguished by such peculiarities in the subsidiary mechanism 
and their physical agents, that the chemical philosophy of vision is entirely inap- 
plicable to either of the rest, while the doctrine which assumes the dependence of 
vision upon the union of oxygen with some combustible element of the retina, or any 
other physical rationale, is contradicted by the strict analogies between seeing, smell- 
ing, hearing, tasting, and feeling. The nerves and nervous centres are the organs in 
all the cases, and a great common principle is the physiological basis of the whole. 
That principle involves what are denominated sensibility, sensation, and perception. 
Any true theory, therefore, of the physiology of vision, in its essential nature, must be 
equally applicable to all other sensations. 

Admitting, therefore, the assumption that external agents give rise to vision through 
the supposed chemical influences upon the retina, the philosophy should be the same 
for all the senses, and in conformity with what is known in chemistry of the coinci- 
dence of causes for coincident results. Now, in the case of vision, light is the agent 
which effects the supposed chemical changes in the retina, and, therefore, something 
at least analogous to light should start the chemical changes in the expanded ol- 
factory, auditory, and other nerves which are the organs of those other sensations 
that are so nearly allied to vision. But there is no resemblance, in their nature, be- 
tween light and all those volatile substances which impress the sensation of smelling, 
or those intrinsic causes which produce all the varieties of tasting, or the endless im- 
pressions which result in the various modifications of feeling, or in the intonations 
which are produced by the undulations of the atmosphere. 



108 . PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

influence of his own Consciousness. Consider, also, how Con- 
sciousness operates, not only as an unceasing assurance of your 
personal identity, but is, as it were, a summary record, ever pres- 
ent to your mind, of all your former thoughts and actions ; and 
the greatest characteristic of Mind is a perpetual consciousness of 
its' own self-acting nature. The Materialist, therefore, is constant- 
ly reasoning in opposition to his own strongest convictions. But 
there is no test of Consciousness in the question before us com- 
parable to that which relates to the Will. Here all is action, 
whether it concern the voluntary muscles or the exercise of the 
Will in its control of the other mental functions. Consciousness 
assures us, in all these demonstrations of the Will, that a self-act- 
ing Agent, originating the phenomena, is absolutely enthroned 
upon the Brain, issuing its mandates at its own sovereign pleas- 
ure — directing with inconceivable velocity the operation of ev- 
ery mental faculty — the exciting and regulating cause of every 
voluntary movement, of every articulate word which gives ex- 
pression to our thoughts, and brings into instant subjection the 
most tumultuous passion. We feel it, we know it All disbe- 
lief and doubt must yield to this irresistible conviction. Or if 
the Will be regarded as only the result of the concurrent action 
of other faculties of the Mind, it enforces the more the logic of 
our conclusions (p. 57). To deny a self-acting Agent, whatever 
other elements of the Mind may be concerned in the action of 
the Will, is a denial of one's Consciousness — a more certain testi- 
mony than any thing afforded by the senses. There is no possi- 
bility of referring the convictions of Consciousness to any imag- 
inable function of the brain or other organs ; and I now rest this 
argumentum ad hominem with the Conscience of the reader.* 

No one will question the fact that, whatever it may be that 
gives rise to the Will and the Passions, they manifest in their re- 
sults a powerful operation upon the brain, and through that or- 
gan upon various other parts .of the body. How absurd, then, 
the supposition that the brain first develops the Will and the 

* Professor Bain, in his " Emotions and the Will,'" expresses in a summary, man- 
ner the opinions of Locke, Thomas Brown, and Dugald Stewart, when he says that 
— "The word Consciousness is identical with Mental Life and its various energies, 
as distinguished from the mere vegetable functions, the condition of sleep, torpor, in- 
sensibility, &c." 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 109 

Passions, or, according to the prevailing philosophy of the " Cor- 
relation or Equivalence of Forces," a modified condition of calor- 
ic, without a conceivable exciting cause, and that this result then 
reacts upon the brain, and gives rise to the distant movements ! 
Moreover, how does this caloric, or any other correlated force of 
inorganic nature, in its action upon the brain, give rise to all the 
variety in the phenomena of Mind, when its effects should be as 
simple as is its assumed operation upon other organs? And 
here we have thus come again upon the modus operandi through 
which the materialistic Philosophers obtain their Yital and Men- 
tal Forces for carrying on the molecular actions that give rise to 
all the physical products of the body, and to all the phenomena 
of Mind — the whole, in either series, being placed upon common 
ground. It is altogether the device of the chemical laboratory, 
in which the endless and unique manifestations of Organic Life 
and of the Intellectual and Instinctive Faculties have had no par- 
ticipation whatever. Chemistry is substituted for Physiology 
and Psychology, and the labors of Locke, and Stewart, and Eeid, 
and Brown, and of all others of a kindred nature, are simply the 
monuments of a past epoch in mental philosophy. 

According, then, to the promulgations of the Chemist's labora- 
tory, which are now accepted as the basis of Physiology and Psy- 
chology, the assumed "molecular action of the brain" is the re- 
sult of a force generated by a "chemical transformation of the 
substance of the brain," and the force thus generated is the beau 
ideal of the human Mind ! It is a part of the connected whole, 
which embraces the entire organism. It is the same as alleged 
of the production of muscular and organic force, which is ex- 
pounded by Liebig in the following manner, in his Animal 
Chemistry applied to Physiology and Pomology — 

"All experience teaches that there is only one source of power 
in the organism, and this source is the transformation of the liv- 
ing parts of the .body into lifeless compounds. This transforma- 
tion occurs in consequence of the combination of. oxygSn with 
the substance of the living body." 

The same doctrine is, as we shall have seen, variously ex- 
pressed by our Author, and applied to the Mind as well as to 
the vital actions. It is the accepted doctrine, and will be critical- 
ly examined when I come to the subject of the " Correlation and 



110 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Conservation of Forces." Dr. H. Bence Jones, in his Croonian 
Lectures on u Matter and Force" (1868), appeals to the authority 
of Chemists for this foundation of his Lectures. He thus quotes 
Dr. Fkankland, Professor of Chemistry at the Eoyal Institu- 
tion : 

"No one" says Dr. Frankland, "possessing any knowledge of phys- 
ical science ivould now venture to hold that vital force is the source of 
muscular power. An animal, however high its organization, can 
no more generate an amount of force capable of moving a grain 
of sand than a stone can fall upward, or a locomotive drive a train 
without fuel" 

The distinguished Lecturer then goes on to tell us of the ab- 
surd manner in which the doctrine of Force is deduced from the 
crucible and test-glass, and which is applied by Materialists as well 
to the Mind as the body. Thus — 

"Professors Liebig and Playfair, and others, say that the chem- 
ical changes in the nitrogenous matter of the muscles are the 
cause of motion. [The Will has nothing to do with it, but a 
force developed in the brain by a similar chemical change in the 
organ.] Professors Frankland, Fick, and others, say that the 
mechanical work is much greater than can be accounted for by 
the amount of change in this matter, as measured by the ueea 
produced. They determine the amount of the mechanical work 
done in a given time, and then translate it into its equivalent of heat, 
weighing also the urea produced in that time. By burning a 
known weight of muscle out of the body, they determine how 
much heat it can produce; and from this they can calculate how 
much muscle must be burnt in the body to give an. amount of heat 
equivalent to the mechanical work done in the given time. [! !] 
They then calculate whaf amount of urea this weight of muscle 
would produce. By comparing the actual amount of urea pro- 
duced with the calculated amount, it appears that only one-fifth 
of the work can come from chemical changes in. the nitrogenous 
texture*of the muscles. Four-fifths of the work must arise from 
the chemical action going on in the non-nitrogenous matters in 
the muscles or in the surrounding blood." ! ! ! 

Such are the absurd experiments of Organic Chemistry, de- 
signed to overthrow the Philosophy of Life and of Medicine, and 
to substitute mechanical forces for the human Soul, and thence, 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. Ill 

by analogy, for the Divine Spirit. But this is not a new aspira- 
tion of Chemistry. It was long ago said by Locke, in his "Hu- 
man Understanding," that — 

" Let a man be given to the contemplation of one sort of knowl- 
edge, and that will become every thing. The mind will take such 
a tincture from & familiarity with that object that every thing- 
else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same view. A 
metaphysician will bring ploughing and gardening immediately 
to abstract notions ; the history of nature will signify nothing to 
him. A Chemist, on the contrary, shall reduce Divinity to the 
maxims of his laboratory, explain morality by sal, sulphur, and 
mercury [and he would have added urea had chemistry advanced 
as far], and allegorize the Scripture itself, and the sacred mys- 
teries thereof, into the philosopher's stone." 

And now Baron Liebig shall tell us how the same chemical 
change occurring in the brain gives rise to the force that brings 
about the phenomena of Mind ; which is the accepted doctrine.. 
And here I return to my position, that the entire body should 
disappear under the combined destruction arising from the or- 
ganic and mental processes, as propounded by Chemistry; for, 
says Liebig, in his 'Animal Chemistry" — 

"Since in different individuals, according to the amount of 
force consumed in producing voluntary mechanical effects, un- 
equal quantities of living tissue are wasted, there must occur in 
every individual, unless the phenomena of motion are to cease 
entirely, a condition in which all voluntary motions are com- 
pletely checked ; in which, therefore, these occasion no waste. 
This condition is called sleep. Now, since the consumption of 
force for the involuntary motions continues in sleep, it is plain 
that a waste of matter also continues in that state; and if the 
original equilibrium is to be restored, we must suppose that dur- 
ing sleep an amount of force is accumulated in the form of living 
tissue exactly equal to that ivhich was consumed in voluntary and 
involuntary motion during the preceding waking period " — all 
of which is the merest chemical speculation. 

Herbert Spencer has an interpretation of sleep, in his "Psy- 
chology" which is, of course, similar to Liebig's — "There has," 
he says, "necessarily established itself that rhythmical variation in 
nervous activity which we see in sleep and waking. Let us ob- 



112 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

serve how these are interpretable, the one as a state of the nerv- 
ous centres in which waste has got considerably in excess of 
repair, and the other as a state in which repair has made up for 
previous excess of waste." "During the day the loss is greater 
than the gain, whereas during the night the gain is diminished 
by scarcely any loss." And in this connection should be pre- 
sented our Author's statement in his " First Principles" that — 

" The forces which we distinguish as mental come within the 
same generalization. Yet there is no alternative but to make this 
assertion." " Besides the correlation and equivalence between the 
EXTERNAL FORCES and the MENTAL FORCES generated by them in 
us under the form of sensations, there is a correlation and equiva- 
lence between sensations and those physical forces which, in the 
shape of bodily actions, result from them." "And how, it may 
be asked, can we interpret by the law of correlation the genesis 
of those thoughts and feelings which, instead of following external 
stimuli, arise spontaneously? The. forces called vital, which we 
have seen to be correlates of the forces called physical, are the 
IMMEDIATE SOURCES of those thoughts and feelings, and ARE EX- 
PENDED IN producing them." The same materialistic philoso- 
phy occurs in our Author's work on "Psychology," as follows — 

" The centres which are the seats of Emotion undergo disin- 
tegration in the genesis of Emotions ; and, other things remaining 
equal, thereupon become less capable of generating Emotions, 
until they are reintegrated." 

And now, after referring the reader to what I have before said 
on the subject of sleep (p. 75), I would ask, How will the Materi- 
alist reconcile the assumption that sleep promotes an increase of 
living tissue in proportion to its assumed destruction by vol- 
untary and involuntary motions during the preceding waking 
periods, with the vast disparities among mankind in regard to 
sleeping and waking, mental and bodily labor, &c. ? Our facts 
would seem to denote even the reverse of the materialistic doc- 
trine. Why are the sailor, the blacksmith, the farmer, and other 
hard-working people, who sleep only four or six hours of the twen- 
ty-four, far better provided with "living tissue" than the habitual, 
gormandizing sluggard, and with an "amount of force " which is 
proverbially " herculean ?" Why are the muscles of their arms 
notoriously increased in volume? These facts, therefore, as well 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 113 

as a 'multitude of others, contradict the materialistic assumptions 
in the most palpable manner. 

But we will hear the accepted Authority, Liebig, rather more 
specifically on the question before us, and where it will appear 
that " every thought, every sensation lays waste the substance of the 
brain," and also that he regards Mind as the product of the brain 
alone, since, like all other Materialists, he considers that — "Ev- 
ert MANIFESTATION OF FORCE IS THE RESULT OF A TRANSFOR- 
MATION OF THE STRUCTURE OR OF ITS SUBSTANCE." 

"Physiology," [that is, Chemistry,] he says, "has sufficiently 
decisive grounds for the opinion, that every thought, every sensa- 
tion, is accompanied by a change in the composition of the substance 
of the brain; that every motion, every manifestation of force, is THE 
result of a transformation of the structure or of its substance." 
" Thought, sensation," &c, are " manifestations of force," and are 
therefore " the result of," &c. Again, he says, that — 

" The higher phenomena of mental existence can not, in the 
present state of science, be referred to their proximate, and still 
less to their ultimate cause. [Of course, therefore, not to a Soul."] 
We only know of them that they exist." Again — " The efforts 
of philosophers, constantly made to penetrate the relations of the 
Soul to animal life, have all along retarded the progress of physi- 
ology. In this attempt men have left the province of philosoph- 
ical research for thai of fancy."— On the contrary, I shall have en- 
deavored to show, and have done so more directly in the Insti- 
tutes of Medicine, that a knowledge of "the relations of the Soul 
to animal life" is not only attainable, but contributes largely to 
" the progress of physiology ;" and most of all, that the imputa- 
tion of "fancy" must recoil upon those who scoff at these sub- 
lime realities. 

The foregoing doctrine, which is quoted from Liebig's work 
on 'Animal Chemistry applied to Pathology and Therapeutics," 
has been generally accepted, and earnestly promulgated by dis- 
tinguished leaders in "the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science " ever since their participation in that Work, 
and which led me to remark, in the Institutes of Medicine, in the 
Edition of 1847, that — " The gigantic physical school had too 
much of the Protean character, too little unity of purpose, and 
demanded greater stability. The learned men of a great Nation, 

8 



114 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the British Association for the Advancement of Science, united in the 
object, and bestowed the honor of achieving the enterprise upon 
a foreign Chemist. The note of proscription has been sounded 
in high quarters in due conformity, and medical philosophy has 
nothing to hope even from a spirit of toleration. The subject, 
therefore, must be brought to the test of observation and reason, 
and he who arraigns the authorized doctrines will cheerfully 
abide an unsuccessful issue." 

Among the members of that Association the President, Pro- 
fessor Huxley, has distinctly expounded, after his logical and co- 
gent manner, the philosophy of maintaining the body inviolate 
under the waste of the "living tissues" far exceeding their re- 
newal ; but it does not appear to have occurred to him that the 
waste arising from mental operations is so much superadded to 
the natural organic waste, and therefore, ecc necessitate rei, the en- 
tire body would succumb to the mental influences. Although 
the quotation does not immediately refer to the materialistic doc- 
trines under consideration, it is a branch of the philosophy, and 
emanates from it. Thus, then, the President, in his late cele- 
brated Lecture on the "Physical Basis of Life" — 

"The matter of life is a veritable 'Peau de Chagrin,' and for 
every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies 
waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the 
waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him 
some physical loss; and in the strictest sense, it burns that others 
may have light — so much eloquence, so much of his body re- 
solved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this 
process of expenditure can not go on forever. But happily the 
protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity 
of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every 
exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever its intel- 
lectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which 
is. conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of proto- 
plasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my 
vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be 
distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the 
beginning. By-and-by, I shall probably have recourse to the 
substance called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to 
its original size. A singular inward laboratory, which I possess, 



THE DOCTEINES IN MATEEIALISM. 115 

will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm, the 
solution so formed will pass into my veins, and the subtle influ- 
ences to which it will then be subjected will convert the dead 
protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep 
into man. Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled 
with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crus- 
tacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into 
humanity. And, were I to return to my own place by sea (ne 
sulor^ &c), and undergo shipwreck, the Crustacea might, and 
probably would, return the compliment;" and more of the same 
gossiping nature. 

That is to say, the body is nourished by what we eat, but no 
more so by the hard-thinking man than by the idiot. Our Au- 
thor, like all the rest of his school, has overlooked the fact that 
no more " mutton," and probably less, is eaten after a powerful 
intellectual effort at declamation, and that less of it is digested 
and " enters the veins" than after the body has been invigorated 
by a night's repose. It is then rapidly converted into blood, and 
is unceasingly applied to the repair of the natural wnste, which 
is equally in progress during sleep as during the waking hours, 
whatever the amount of muscular or intellectual labor. Materi- 
alism has naturally imputed to the body those influences of sleep 
which are exerted upon the susceptible Principle of Life. It is 
that Principle, and not the body, which is invigorated by sleep, 
and through that, the Intellectual Faculties; and the physiolog- 
ical facts now before us are fully demonstrative of the error both 
of Chemistry and Materialism. 

See, also, how the emaciated consumptive patient, with only 
snatches of sleep, toils at his intellectual labors, even after re- 
duced to a slender diet of bread and water, and with a vigor of 
Mind unsurpassed in days of health and refreshing enjoyments. 
The whole history of the malignant epidemic cholera presents 
the Mind as sparkling as ever in the midst of the ruins of or- 
ganic life, in which are included the brain as well as the almost 
pulseless heart, and the expiring functions of every other organ, 
closely representing the disembodied Soul. 

Let us now look at another important fact that has been en- 
tirely neglected in all this speculation about the molecular ac- 
tion, combustion, and waste of the body, in its application to the 



116 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

brain. It has been wholly disregarded that the brain is perpet- 
ually subject to such a powerful irritation transmitted from the 
lungs as to compel it to keep in motion the whole apparatus 
of respiratory muscles, and which knows no quiescence during 
sleep (p. 44). The " tissues " of the brain are, therefore, far more 
severely taxed by the process of respiration than by the Mind 
itself; and yet the brain, under all this accumulated work, and 
all that I have not here mentioned, which consists in the- unceas- 
ing irritations that are propagated upon it from all parts of the 
body, in its office of maintaining, by reflex actions, harmonious 
relations among all the organs (p. 36) — notwithstanding, I say, all 
this accumulated work devolving upon the brain, the organ un- 
dergoes no more waste than the organs of sense (which enjoy 
the greatest repose during sleep), and equally, also, the ever-toil- 
ing respiratory muscles, and the never-failing heart, with its sev- 
enty-five or more pulsations in a minute, from the hour of birth 
to the last moment of life. This unceasing action of the muscles 
of respiration, of the heart, of the intestines, &c, is decisive against 
the chemical doctrine of waste ; nor is there any better fact nec- 
essary to show the absurdity of the interference of Chemistry 
with Physiology. Already, however, is the chemical dogma of 
a waste of muscle, brain, &c, corresponding with the amount of 
work to which the organs are subjected, receiving its doom from 
later observations. We can have no better authority for this 
than a statement by Dr. Jones, in the Croonian Lectures for 
1868, presenting a fact exactly the reverse of the chemico-mate- 
rialistic doctrine, and which I maintained nearly thirty years ago 
in the Institutes of Medicine. But nothing is accepted in Physiol- 
ogy in these days but what proceeds directly from the Chemist's 
Laboratory. Thus, Dr. Jones — 

" The experiments made by Dr. Parkes most completely con- 
firm the view that the motion of muscle during exercise does not 
hear any relationship to the amount of chemical disintegration in 
the albuminous substance of the muscle. Indeed, he suggests 
the opinion that the action of the muscle is not connected with disin- 
tegration, but with formation ; that when it is IN exercise it IN- 
CREASES, and when it is quiescent it lessens in bulk — that is, that it 
more rapidly disintegrates during rest than during exercise;" and 
therefore, also, so of the brain. 



t 
THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 117 

This startling sound from the laboratory is the doom of Chem- 
istry in its application to living beings. It will gather force from 
all surrounding facts, and banish Chemistry from the field of 
Physiology and Medicine, and lay Materialism, in all its shapes, 
prostrate in that dust from which it emerged. We thus see that 
the hypothesis of chemico-molecular action and a corresponding 
waste of the body and brain, either as a cause or a consequence 
of mental processes, is the " baseless fabric of a dream ;" or, rath- 
er, a bold assumption to serve as a foundation of materialism, 
both in respect to Organic Life and the Soul, and therefore a re- 
ductio ad absurdum. . There can be no doubt, however, that mus- 
cular exercise may be carried to such a degree of violence that 
when long continued, and particularly if more or less attended 
by privation of sleep and food, a greater than the natural waste 
of the body will arise. But this is well known to be inapprecia- 
ble unless critically determined by the scales, as often witnessed 
in armies after long and fatiguing marches. 

If the reader be not weary of this discussion, which is pursued 
only on account of its forming the basis of materialism, I will 
now recur to my physical demonstration, by which the doctrine 
of chemico-molecular action and waste of the brain, or any 
"change in the composition of its substance corresponding to 
every thought, every sensation, every act of the Will," will be 
summarily confuted by materialistic premises. 

Now, therefore, if there be any foundation for the doctrine, 
and according, indeed, to its absolute requirements, nothing 
should give rise to the special chemical or molecular action of 
the brain necessary to each particular Thought, act of the Will, 
Mental Emotion, or Sensation, but that exact state of the brain 
in which the special change consists — for that is the materialistic 
ratiocination — leaving, as we have seen, the chemical or molecu- 
lar action, or other changes in the brain, without any imaginable 
cause. But I have shown that a great variety of things acting 
upon the brain will imitate exactly many of the phenomena of 
Mind. Thus, we have seen that the Will may imitate the spasms 
that are brought about by mechanical irritations of the brain, 
and, also, the spasms of hysteria that result from mental irrita- 
tion or from irritations extended to the brain from other parts, 
and such as arise from irritations propagated to the brain by 



118 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

teething or by intestinal troubles ; that the Will also excites ex- 
actly the same movements of the respiratory muscles, in breath- 
ing, as are produced by the irritation of the brain that is propa- 
gated upon it from the lungs — the voluntary and involuntary 
act being undistinguishably alike. So, too, as we have seen, the 
Will may act upon the sphincter muscles exactly after the man- 
ner of that nervous influence which is permanently directed 
upon them by the inferior portion of the spinal cord, and by 
which they are held in contraction — the Will, in this case, act- 
ing upon the brain in the voluntary act, and in the involuntary 
a physical cause unceasingly operating upon the inferior part 
of the spinal cord. So, again, we have seen that the Mind will 
bring on vomiting like an emetic, on seeing another vomit, or 
from a recollection of its occurrence ; and sneezing, also, after the 
mannner of snuff, by turning the attention strongly upon the 
nose. And equally, also, have we seen how the action of the 
Passions upon the heart and blood-vessels is imitated by alcohol, 
tobacco, &c, applied to the brain ; besides other analogous illus- 
trations which I have brought to the subject. 

Now, in all these examples we must suppose that the brain is 
affected much in the same way as in that of the several physical 
causes, respectively; and surely nothing can be more absurd 
than the supposition that the physical causes institute certain 
chemical or molecular actions in the brain after the manner of 
the actions assumed as the cause of the Mental phenomena ; for 
so it must be if the supposed chemical or molecular action ob- 
tain in the case of the Mind. As to the nature of the impressions 
exerted by the Soul upon the brain, or by physical agents ap- 
plied directly to the organ, or by impressions coming through 
the senses, or by influences reflected upon it from distant parts, 
we know nothing. 

Before dismissing this fundamental doctrine in materialism, I 
will refer to another indisputable demonstration which I have 
made, that a self-acting Agent is associated with the brain as the 
exciting cause of every act of the Will upon the voluntary mus- 
cles, and of the Passions upon the involuntary ; and therefore of 
every mental phenomenon — that is to say, all the involuntary 
movements to which the brain contributes, such as those of the 
muscles of respiration, &c, and all such as depend immediately 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 119 

upon other parts of the nervous system, as the sphincter mus- 
cles, are demonstrably owing to an excitement of the brain, or 
of other parts of the nervous system, by physical influences de- 
termined upon them either by external agents, as by light upon 
the brain, through the optic nerve, in the case of the iris, or by 
some irritation transmitted from the lungs to the medulla ob- 
longata of the brain in respiration. Hence, I say, it follows by 
an irresistible analogy, that the phenomena of Mind, as mani- 
fested in voluntary motion, &c, require just as much an exciting 
cause acting upon the brain, as the organic phenomena which 
are admitted to require a physical cause acting upon that organ 
or upon other parts of the nervous system ; and that Cause, as 
we have seen, must be of a self-acting nature. 

Materialists are apt to refer to the extreme doctrines in Phre- 
nology in proof of the dependence of the phenomena of Mind 
upon the brain alone. That there is a general foundation for 
Phrenology is indisputable, as, for example, the rational faculties 
are generally most strongly pronounced in those individuals who 
have the greatest development of the anterior part of the brain. 
Nor would it be at all inconsistent with the doctrine of the Soul 
should Phrenology prove to be true in its minuter details. The 
brain being the organ of the manifold operations of the Soul, it 
would seem, a priori, probable that its various parts are specif- 
ically designed for the special uses of the Agent which the organ 
subserves. But these details are not only not demonstrated, but 
they are contradicted by what we observe in animals. This is 
obvious enough in the greater proportional Instinctive faculties 
in some of the inferior tribes where there is only a ganglion for a 
brain, as in the honey-bee, than in the superior animals, where 
the development of the brain approximates that of man, as in 
the quadrumanous tribes, and who are destitute of the rational 
faculties. This, therefore, goes with the rest in proving that the 
brain is merely an instrument through which some Agent, capa- 
ble of originating actions, performs the work of mental opera- 
tions, and increases the obscurity attending the functional rela- 
tions to the Mind of the various parts of the human brain. The 
following enlightened opinion of J. Stuart Mill upon this sub- 
ject, in his " System of Logic," will be regarded at least as im- 
partial : 



120 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"Admitting the influence of cerebral conformation to be as 
great as contended for — that is, the supposed connection be- 
tween the strength of different mental propensities or capacities, 
and the proportional or absolute magnitudes of different regions 
of the brain, as taught phrenologically — it would still be a ques- 
tion how far the cerebral development determined the propensity 
itself, and how far it only acted by modifying the nature and 
degree of the sensations on which the propensity is phrenologic- 
ally dependent. And it is certain that in human beings, at least, 
differences in education and in outward circumstances, together 
with physical differences in the -sensations produced in different 
individuals by the same external or internal causes, are capable 
of accounting for a far greater portion of character than is sup- 
posed even by the most moderate Phrenologists. There are, 
however, many mental facts which do not seem to admit of this 
mode of explanation. Such, to take the strongest case, as the 
various instincts of animals, the portion of human nature which 
corresponds to those instincts. No mode has been suggested, 
even by way of hypothesis, in which these can receive any satis- 
factory, or even plausible explanation, from psychological causes 
alone ; and they may probably be found to have as positive, and 
even, perhaps, as direct and immediate a connection with the 
physical condition of the brain and nerves, as many of our mere 
sensations have." 

In regard to our Author's opinion of Instinct, it will probably 
appear, from what I have yet to say upon the subject, that no 
inferences can be derived from the structure of the brain and 
nerves of animals as to their participation in the operations of 
the Instinctive Principle, and as little in regard to the human 
brain in relation to instinctive manifestations. The phenomena 
clearly refer themselves far more to the constitution of the Soul, 
and of the Principle of Instinct, than to the nervous system. 
So far as any thing is inferable from anatomical structure, it sus- 
tains this conclusion. Both the brain and the nerves of man 
and animals concur in showing that this is as true of the instinct- 
ive as of the rational manifestations, which are the true sources 
of information as to the part which these organs take in the men- 
tal functions. If we compare the phenomena with the brain and 
nerves of different animals, and those phenomena with the same 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 121 

organs in man, it becomes the more evident, from their great dis- 
parity in the different tribes, that these organs have only a very 
subordinate agency in the intellectual and instinctive processes. 

And so with the functions of other organs. The motor power 
of muscles resides in the muscles ; but not, as Herbert Spencer 
has it in his "Psychology" — "Locked up in certain tissues and 
liberated by the nerves." It is a property of Life, the vis insita 
of Haller, brought into action by various causes, according to the 
nature of the function. Blood is the natural stimulant for all the 
organic functions ; but the organs which perform them may be 
also stimulated to action by the nervous influence, as already 
variously explained. Other physical causes may have the same 
effect. But the nervous influence is the stimulus by which the 
motor power of the voluntary muscles and the muscles con- 
cerned in respiration is brought into action. The nervous influ- 
ence is determined upon the voluntary muscles by the action of 
the Will upon the brain, and upon the respiratory muscles in 
voluntary breathing by the same direct action of the Will ; but 
upon the involuntary muscles, and upon the respiratory in nat- 
ural respiration, by reflex actions of the nervous system, induced 
by physical impressions propagated upon the brain by distant 
organs (p. 44). Farther : there is no corresponding relation 
between the brain and nerves, in respect to size, and the motor 
powers of the voluntary muscles of different animals. Many of 
the smallest birds and insects manifest far greater muscular pow- 
er in proportion to their nervous system than the quadrumanous 
animals of the greatest development of that system ; and the brain 
and nerves of a horse weigh only about two pounds, while those 
of a man have a weight of three or four pounds. 

Nevertheless, it should be stated that so great is the para- 
mount importance of the brain and nerves in -the materialistic 
philosophy, that its principal British Expounder, Herbert 
Spencer, lays the foundation of his work on "Psychology" 
upon a very extensive- and minute analysis of the composition as 
well as the structure of those organs, and particularly to serve as 
a basis for chemical interpretations. 

And now, again, a few words more as to Sensation (p. 29). 
How do impressions made upon the brain through the medium 
of the senses enable us to appreciate the external sources from 



122 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which they proceed ? How do we comprehend the details of an 
extensive landscape at a glance of the eye? The Materialist 
replies — through chemical actions instituted in the retina, and 
thence propagated to the brain with corresponding results in 
that organ. Every object, light and shadow, &c, in the land- 
scape sets up a special chemical action in the retina and brain, 
and thus the brain recognizes the external objects. That is the 
chemical doctrine which supposes light to set in motion the ele- 
mentary constituents of the retina ; but it does not affect to ex- 
plain how the landscape is thus impressed. There is also another 
and later chemical doctrine, which is* too curious and character- 
istic of materialism to be neglected. But the Materialist shall 
express the philosophy in his own peculiar phraseology, and 
which will serve to exemplify the usage of Materialists in deriv- 
ing illustrations of the vital and mental functions from assumed 
parallel devices of Art, and which has prevailed ever since Lie- 
big brought forward, in his "Animal Chemistry applied to Physi- 
ology" the Steam-engine to prove that — "The tody in regard to the 
production o/"heat and FORCE acts just like one of those machines." 
And as to the special function of Sensation, exemplified by vis- 
ion, we are told by Herbert Spencer, in his "Psychology," 
that — 

"The propelled hammer explodes the unstable detonating 
powder in the cap ; thus playing a part comparable to that of the 
concentrated pencil of light which causes decomposition in one 
of the minute sensitive rods of the retina. The explosion of the 
cap explodes the powder in the pistol ; a change that may sym- 
bolize the setting up of decomposition in an adjacent ganglionic 
cell by a disturbed retina element. The flash from the mouth 
of the pistol [that is, the optic nerve] fires the brain, which, car- 
rying the flame onward, blows up the magazine [that is, 
the brain !] ; and this serves to illustrate the action of the par- 
tially decomposed ganglionic cell, which propagates a shock 
through the afferent nerve to a large amount of unstable mat- 
ter in the optic nerve, where an immense amount of molecular 
motion is thereupon disengaged." ! ! ! This impulse reaches the 
brain, molecular motions are generated there, and vision follows. 

What, then, I rejoin, enables us to recall, at remote periods of 
time, after the external objects have ceased to operate, all the in- 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 123 

tellectual results of the original sensations? The Materialist re- 
plies, permanent images impressed upon the brain. But how 
represented or impressed upon the brain by the transient chem- 
ical or molecular motions? I ask, again, for the Cause which re- 
calls those assumed images, and elects the precise ones, and with- 
out any confusion with others, from the myriads that are mixed 
up with each other, so that they will reproduce the intellectual 
results of the original sensations? The cause should plainly 
consist, according to the materialistic doctrine, of an exact renew- 
al of the former chemical or molecular motions ; but as the land- 
scape, with its forests, hills and dales, river and cataract, flocks 
and herds, or other external objects, are no longer present to stir 
up the elements of the retina, or " explode its cells," and transmit 
the influence to the brain, what, then, rouses the chemical or mo- 
lecular motion in that organ? The Materialist is thus coerced 
to the tacit^ admission of a self-acting Cause that reproduces the 
phenomena, and is as necessary to their reproduction as the phys- 
ical impressions were to the original perceptions and ideas. One 
is as much a cause as the other ; with the difference that the re- 
sults of the original sensations can be reproduced only by a self- 
acting Agent, while the original physical impressions roused that 
Agent into action, by which the external objects were perceived 
and appropriated as a fountain of other ideas. The knowledge 
thus acquired remains afterwards at the disposal of the self-acting 
Cause, which simply calls upon the brain for more or less of its 
instrumentality. It is, beyond question, precisely similar in its 
nature to that by which the Creator recalls and reviews all the 
illimitable past. And since the foregoing is demonstrably true, 
it equally follows, from our premises, that all the original ideas 
relative to the landscape, or such others as may have had a dif- 
ferent origin, must have been primarily discerned, appreciated, or 
originated, and held in memory by that self-acting Cause, which 
is forever able, at its pleasure, to reproduce the images, ideas, &c. 
Again, if physical impressions upon the brain are necessary to 
Sensation, and to the knowledge which comes through that medi- 
um, or, in the language of materialism, if those exciting causes 
develop the cerebral' actions in w T hich the mental functions con- 
sist, then it becomes manifest that there must be equally an ex- 
citing cause of the movements which attend the mental processes 



124 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that are independent of Sensation. The logic is indisputable; 
from which it, again, follows that we must look to a self-acting 
Cause of the latter phenomena, and therefore equally for those 
ideas which are associated with Sensation. The impressions 
made upon the brain through the organs of sense are only 
-equivalent to the impression made by external objects upon the 
senses, and serve merely to excite the brain, which, in its turn, 
brings the self-acting Cause into operation. That Cause then 
takes up the physical impression, and not only appreciates its 
nature, but elaborates from it a complicated series of ideas in 
which all the faculties of the Mind display their participation. 
The slightest suggestion through the avenue of the senses, or the 
utterance of a word, may pervade the Nations, and become the 
source of the most important consequences to mankind. " The 
fall of an apple" has led to the whole philosophy in Astrono- 
my ; and the eating of an apple has contributed to all the sinful 
thoughts and actions of the human race, led to the stupendous 
Dispensations of the Old and New Testaments, and modified the 
original design of the Creator in regard to his rational creatures. 
And yet, say the Materialists, this was only a series of " chemical 
or molecular actions " in all the brains of mankind set in motion 
by an apple. 

I was a little premature in saying that Chemistry does not 
profess to explain how a landscape is depicted upon the retina 
of the eye. This achievement was effected as early as 1849 by 
one of the ablest Chemists who has yet flourished, but a thorough 
materialist in respect to Life, the eminent Professor Lehman. 
The reader will observe that he has not been unmindful of Lie- 
big's parallel between the steam-engitfe and the human body. 
Thus our Author, in his " Physiological Chemistry " — 

" Weariness of the senses is the diminished impressibility of 
the nerves of sense, but its cause can not reasonably be sought 
for in any other than a CHEMICAL CHANGE experienced by the 
conducting substance of the nerves. Such a chemical metamorpho- 
sis of the nerves of sense from external impressions can no longer 
greatly excite our astonishment, since we have witnessed the un- 
expected phenomenon of a picture produced* suddenly, and as it 
were by magic, from the chemical changes effected by the rays of light 
on an iodized silver plate. [! !] Should we not be equally 



THE DOCTRINES IN MATERIALISM. 125 

justified in saying that the iodized plate, which, after being ex- 
posed for a few seconds to a strong light, gives only faint and 
half-effaced images, is wearied like the retina, when, after 
repeated and continuous perception of an image, it gives back 
only the faint outlines of the object?" ! ! 

But, as I have said of this in the Institutes of Medicine, it is only 
an example of a vast amount of a corresponding nature by which 
I have endeavored to show that Chemistry and Physiology are 
profoundly distinct from each other, and that when the Chemist 
departs from his legitimate pursuit to gather laurels in Physiol- 
ogy, whatever may be his ability, he is acting the part of a 
mere Charlatan. Indeed, I have shown extensively in the fore- 
going work (pp. 779-784), that our distinguished Author himself 
justifies this conclusion. 



126 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER V. 

MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 

Many profound thinkers who defend the existence of an intel- 
ligent Soul have been disposed to consider it a material sub- 
stance, incorporated with the brain. But this is not materialism, 
as appears from what has been said in our last two chapters. 
The doctrine of the materiality of the Sou], however, involves 
some important problems which may well engage our attention. 
Mr. Locke, in his work on the "Human Understanding," presents 
the subject in its common acceptation, and was himself indiffer- 
ent about the question of the Soul's materiality or immateriality, 
or even whether the brain itself be not endowed with the Men- 
tal Faculties — which would be still in no respect materialism. 
Hence he is supposed by many to have been a Materialist. But 
our quotations will show that he was an undoubting advocate of 
a distinct, intelligent Soul, while also, as will be seen, he consid- 
ered the Soul to be immaterial. 

"We have," he says, "the ideas of Matter and Thinking, but 
possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere mate- 
rial being thinks, or no ; it being impossible for us, by the con- 
templation of our own ideas, without Revelation, to discover 
whether Omnipotency has not given to some Systems of Matter 
fitly disposed a thinking immaterial Substance ; it being, in re- 
spect of our notions, not much more remote from our compre- 
hension to conceive that God can, if He pleases, superadd to 
matter a Faculty of Thinking ; since we know not wherein 
Thinking consists, nor to what sort of Substances the Almighty 
has been pleased to give that Power, which can not be in any 
created being but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of 
the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first, eter- 
nal, Thinking Being should, if He pleased, give to certain systems 
of created senseless Matter, put together as He thinks fit, some 
degree of Sense, Perception, and Thought. / say not this that 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 127 

I would any ivay lessen the belief in the SouTs Immateriality. I am 
not here speaking of probability, but knowledge ; and I think 
not only that it becomes the modesty of Philosophy not to pro- 
nounce magisterially where we want that evidence that can pro- 
duce knowledge, but also that it is of use to us to discern how far 
our knowledge does reach ; for the state we are at present in, not 
being that of vision, we must, in many things, content ourselves 
with faith and probability. And in the present question about 
the immateriality of the Soul, if our Faculties can not arrive at 
demonstrative certainty, we need not think it strange. All the 
great ends of morality and religion are well enough secured, with- 
out philosophical proofs of the Soul's immateriality ; since it is 
evident that He who made us at first begin to subsist here sensi- 
ble, intelligent beings, and for several years continued us in such 
a state, can and will restore us to the like state of sensibility in 
another world, and make us capable there to receive the retribu- 
tion He has designed to men, according to their doings in this 
life. And therefore it is not of such mighty necessity to deter- 
mine one way or the other, as some over-zealous for or against the 
immateriality of the Soul have been forward to make the World 
believe. Who, either on the one side, indulging too much their 
thoughts immersed altogether in matter, can allow no existence to 
what is not material, or who, on the other side, finding no Cogita- 
tion within the natural powers of matter, examined over and over 
again by the utmost intention of Mind, have the confidence to 
conclude that Omnipotency itself can not give Perception and 
Thought to a substance which has the modification of solidity." 
In another place he says, that—" Having no other idea or notion 
of matter but something wherein the many sensible qualities which 
affect our senses do subsist, so also by supposing a Substance 
wherein Thinking, Knowing, Doubting, and a Power of Moving, 
&c, do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the Substance of 
Spirit as toe have of Body; the one being supposed to be (with- 
out knowing why it is) the Substratum to those simple ideas we 
have from without, and the other supposed (with a like ignorance 
of what it is) to be the Substratum to those operations we experi- 
ment in ourselves within. 'Tis plain, then, that the idea of corpo- 
real Substance in matter is as remote from our conceptions and ap- 
prehensions as that of Spiritual Substance, or Spirit; and therefore, 



128 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

from our not having any notion of the Substance of Spirit, we 
can no more conclude its non-existence than we can, for the 
same reason, deny the existence of the body ; it being as ra- 
tional to affirm there is no body, because we have no clear and 
distinct idea of the Substance of matter, as to say there is no 
Spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the Substance 
of a Spirit." 

No believer in a Creative Power can doubt the ability of such 
a Power to invest matter with Intellectual Faculties — either the 
brain or some self-acting material substance associated with the 
brain. But my demonstration proves that no such faculties ap- 
pertain to the* brain itself; and as an associate material intelli- 
gent Substance would constitute a self-acting Soul, such a Sub- 
stance might be accepted but for two important reasons. The 
first of the two is the least important, namely, that such a suppo- 
sition would lead the Kationalist to the conclusion that a material 
Soul would be no more destined for immortality than the brain 
with which it is associated ; since he could with far greater reason 
deduce this conclusion from analogies supplied by other matter 
than the doctrine that the brain itself yields the phenomena of 
Mind, between which and the manifestations of all other matter 
there are no analogies whatever. Grant to the Materialist the 
ground that the Sentient Principle is material, and his sophistry 
will be strongly fortified. But it would be only a plausible soph- 
istry, not the violation of all philosophy, as when he reasons from 
the common properties and phenomena of matter to those of the 
Mind, and confounds these together as one and identical. 

The second and greater objection which I am to consider in- 
volves both atheism and annihilation. This must be readily 
granted, since the human Mind is manifestly constituted upon 
the plan of the Divine Mind, however low the former may be in 
its gradation. Indeed, all that we know of the Divine Being is 
founded upon what we know of ourselves. We reason from our 
own Thoughts to His, from our own Will, our own designs, &c. 
We feel our power of volition and our muscular and mental 
force, analyze our designs, and extend them and all our thoughts 
to infinity in pursuit of the Cause of all this wonderful work. 
Socrates, Plato, Cicero, and other such heathen Minds, doubtless 
reasoning in that same manner, and without our aid of Kevela- 



MATEKIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 129 

tion, were firm in the faith that the human Soul is closely allied 
to the Deity. Others, by the same process, have supposed that 
the Soul of man is a portion of the Deity Himself, and that death 
will restore this derivative part to the Original Whole. Plato 
derived a part of his triply-compounded Soul from the Deity, 
but believed it would continue after death ina separate state, as 
it had existed before its union with the body ; and not, as has 
been attributed to him by many, that it would be united to the 
Deity. 

Saint-Pierre remarks that — "The uninstructed human Mind 
turns its efforts towards heaven, and dwells with transport on in- 
nate feelings of infinity, eternity, glory, and immortality. It may 
even be said to feel the same kind of consciousness from impres- 
sions of this description, as from those which are merely corpo- 
real. Our Minds may be considered an emanation of that Divine 
Mind which governs the world, in the same way as our body is 
made up of elementary substances, and affected in its operation 
by those influences which regulate the works of Nature at large." 
—Harmonies of Nature. 

Such, then, being the constitutional tendency of the human 
Mind, and so cogent are the analogies between the human and 
the Divine Mind, we unavoidably conclude that the human 
Mind was created after the pattern of the Divine Mind ; and it 
follows, therefore, I say, that if the Thinking, Willing, Designing 
Principle in man be material, so, also, must be his Creator. This 
revolting doctrine places the Deity on common ground with that 
matter which He is supposed to have created out of nothing ; 
and the conclusion becomes unavoidable that all matter is self- 
existent, and therefore that the belief in a Creative Power is a 
mere delusion ; from which it would follow that there is no fu- 
ture for the human race. 

The foregoing argument is simply open to the objection, that a 
material God may be assumed to possess endowments that do not 
appertain to common matter. But who will doubt that, if this 
doctrine were admitted, it would be merged immediately into 
atheism? But there is no shadow of compromise with the com- 
mon Materialist, who knows no other source of Mind than the 
brain itself; for then, by my irrefutable premises — the analogies 
between the human and Divine Mind — the apparent works of a 

9 



130 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Creator would have been mere elaborations from common mat- 
ter; which is equivalent to the self-existence of matter, and 
therefore to a denial of Creative Power. Hence the conclusion 
of mj argument is that, if immateriality be necessary to the Su- 
preme Being, it is equally so to the Soul of man, and therefore 
to its immortality. 

The disposition of the scientific mind to grasp at the properties 
of matter for resolving the problems of Mind is well shown by 
Saint-Pierre, in his " Harmonies of Nature," when lamenting 
Mr. Locke's rejection of innate ideas, thinking that others would 
make it a basis for materialism. What, however, Saint-Pierre 
regards as innate ideas in animals are either the incidental conse- 
quences of the mental constitution of animals, or result originally 
from Sensation, as I shall endeavor to show when I come to the 
subject of Instinct. But there are peculiarities appertaining to 
the Instinctive Principle through which the physical constitution 
of the animal operates in a manner that is equivalent to Sensa- 
tion, and determines ideas in conformity with the peculiarities of 
the species. These peculiarities may be called innate propensi- 
ties; but they are not innate ideas. Objections may be reasona- 
bly alleged against innate ideas in man ; so that the radical dif- 
ference between the Soul and Instinctive Principle consists in 
the ability of the former to originate ideas independently of all 
sensation, while those of Instinct are more or less consequent 
upon its connection with the body. Indeed, our Author's con- 
trast between what he regards as the innate ideas of animals and 
man leads to the conclusion that, were they of that nature, man 
is greatly excelled by animals in this endowment. But it will 
be seen that a critical test occurs in the manifestation of Instinct 
by the human infant, which our Author justly regards as paral- 
lel with the instinctive habits of animals. There can be, how- 
ever, no greater mistake than' the supposition that the sucking of 
the infant child is the result of innate ideas, any more so, indeed, 
than the same phenomenon in the infant animal ; and therefore 
our Author's illustration by other examples is equally deficient 
in proof of innate ideas. Our Author, however, has mistaken in- 
nate propensities for innate ideas, and I therefore refer to him to 
show how a great thinker regards the question, and how easy a 
matter it is, in his judgment, to fall into atheism, and, also, as pre- 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 131 

liminary to what will be ultimately said of the distinctions be- 
tween the Soul of man and the Instinctive Principle. I now 
come to our Author, Saint-Pierre — 

" Mr. Locke," he says, " was not aware that, by refusing innate 
ideas to man, he was furnishing arguments to anarchy and materi- 
alism; yet he ought to have felt that on a future day a conclu- 
sion would be drawn, not merely from his reasoning, but from 
his example and authority, that, since man had no innate ideas, 
all those which he acquired must be conventional ; and that if 
notions of morality were thus arbitrary, the result would be that 
we are formed to act our parts in life without the benefit of di- 
rections from nature. Of his followers, some conclude that phys- 
ical laws only are to he obeyed, and fall accordingly into materialism " 
— -from which it will be observed that our Author regards the 
two propositions as equivalent, and of which much will appear in 
the following chapters. 

Our Author goes on — " Had Mr. Locke bestowed a moment- 
ary reflection on the innate ideas of animals, he would have rec- 
ognized their existence in every part of the world ; he would 
have been satisfied that it was by means of them that a caterpil- 
lar, coming out of its egg, quits its original branch, and seeks 
pasture on a leaf which is as young as itself. He would have 
accounted in the same way for this insect choosing subsequently 
a retreat under a branch sheltered from wind and rain ; for its 
weaving a shell with admirable skill for its own abode when in a 
state of chrysalis ; and for its leaving a little opening to get out 
when metamorphized into a butterfly, although it can at that 
time have had no knowledge of either change from experience. 
A mind like Locke's could not fail to have contemplated with 
admiration the regularity of these operations, as well as those of 
the insect in its future condition of a butterfly. After creeping 
a long time like a worm, it is, all at once, provided with four 
splendid wings ; it skims along the air, and sports with the winds 
without any previous instruction ; it alights on flowers, sucks 
the honey from their nectarine glands, so long unknown to our 
botanists, follows through the air a little female previously un- 
known to it, and often of a different color, but invariably of its 
own species; finally this little female deposits its eggs, not on 
the frail leaf where she has lived herself, but on a permanent 



132 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

branch, where they may brave the injuries of a winter, which, 
however, she has not yet experienced. 

"Such considerations as these could hardly have failed to sug- 
gest the idea of man having, in like manner, his innate ideas. 
Has not the new-born child some kind of pre-sensation when it 
sucks its mother's nipple and extracts the milk ? It discovers, 
after the lapse of a few years only, a presentiment of the kind- 
ness or ill-nature of those around it merely by their looks." 

These opinions upon the subject of innate ideas have an im- 
portant bearing upon the distinctions between the Soul and In- 
stinctive Principle ; and when I come to the consideration of 
the latter, I shall endeavor to show that what has been regarded 
as innate ideas have no existence either in man or animals, how- 
ever much instinctive habits may appear to give plausibility to 
the doctrine; while, on the contrary, these habits are not even 
allied to the processes of Keason. 

The propensity of minds in pursuit of science to convert the 
manifestations of matter into the evidences of the materiality of 
thought, sensation, &c, is strongly exemplified in instances of 
writers who stood upon doubtful ground, and particularly where 
the premises were purely hypothetical. Such was the case with 
Dr. Hartley's hypothesis of "vibrations of the nerves and 
brain," and its application by the eminent philosopher and di- 
vine, Dr. Priestley, to the whole philosophy of Mind. 

Hartley expounded all ideas, their associations, &c, all im- 
pressions transmitted to the brain by the senses, all voluntary 
and involuntary motions, by vibratory motions of the. particles 
that compose the brain and nerves. Not that " the nerves them- 
selves vibrate like musical strings, but vibrations or oscillations 
of the small, and, as one may say, infinitesimal, medullary parti- 
cles." These vibrations occur in the brain in all acts of intellec- 
tion, they " generate ideas" and, " whatever changes are made in 
the substance of the brain, corresponding changes are made in our 
ideas." And so of the nerves in their tributary functions to Sen- 
sation, voluntary and involuntary motion, secretion, &c; and here 
we first meet with the philosophical terms of motor and sensitive 
nerves. Hartley also very consistently applies the same doctrine 
to the Instinctive and bodily functions of animals. 
*It appears, therefore, that this doctrine is essentially the same 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OE THE SOUL. 133 

as the chemical or " molecular motions " of a large proportion of 
the present school of materialism ; though Hartley was perplexed 
with his doctrine, whether it would or not admit of the existence 
of a Soul. 

No correct apprehension can be formed of Hartley's hypothesis 
of vibrations from Priestley's edition of his work, who has mu- 
tilated its language to suit his own views, omitted many sections, 
and substituted sections of his own, yet purporting to be Hart- 
ley's and under Hartley's preambles. The inquisitive reader, 
therefore, must consult the original edition of 1749, which was 
ostensibly followed by Priestley in 1775. 

Hartley's hypothesis led him to infer the " doctrine of neces- 
sity," and he scarcely escaped the vortex of absolute materialism, 
as will appear by the following extract from his "Theory of the 
Mechanism of the Human Mind." Thus — 

" It may be objected to the whole foregoing theory, as well as 
to the doctrine of vibrations in particular, that it is unfavorable 
to the immateriality of the soul, and by consequence to its immor- 
tality. But to this I answer, that I am reduced to the necessity 
of making a postulatum at the entrance of my inquiries ; which 
precludes all possibility of proving the materiality of the soul 
from this theory afterwards. Thus I suppose, or postulate, in 
my first proposition, that sensations arise in the soul from mo- 
tions excited in the medullary substance of the brain. I do, in- 
deed, bring some arguments from physiology and pathology to 
show this to be a reasonable postulatum, when understood in a 
general sense ; for it is all one to the purpose of the foregoing 
theory, whether the motions in the medullary substance be the 
physical cause of the sensations, according to the system of the 
schools, or the occasional cause, according to Malebranch, or only 
an adjunct, according to Leibnitz. However, this is not suppos- 
ing matter to be endowed with sensation, or any way explaining 
what the soul is ; but only taking its existence, and connection 
with the bodily organs in the most simple case, for granted, in 
order to make further inquiries. It does, indeed, follow from this 
theory that matter, if it could be endowed with the most simple 
kinds of sensation, might also arrive at all that intelligence of 
which the human mind is possessed. Whence this theory must 
be allowed to overturn all the arguments which are usually brought 



134 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

for the immateriality of the soul from the subtlety of the internal 
senses, and of the rational faculty. But I noways presume to de- 
termine whether matter can be endowed with sensation or no. 
This is a point foreign to the purpose of my inquiries. It is suf- 
ficient for me that there is a certain connection, of one kind or 
other, between the sensations of the soul and the motions excited 
in the medullary substance of the brain; which is what all Phy- 
sicians and Philosophers allow. I would not, therefore, be any 
way interpreted so as to oppose the immateriality of the soul. 
On the contrary, I see clearly and acknowledge readily, that 
matter and motion, however, subtly divided or reasoned upon, 
yield nothing more than matter and motion still. But then nei- 
ther would I affirm that this consideration affords a proof of the 
soul's immateriality. In like manner the unity of consciousness 
seems to me an inconclusive argument. For consciousness is a 
mental perception ; and if perception be a monad, then every in- 
separable adjunct of it must be so too, that is, vibrations, accord- 
ing to this theory, which is evidently false ; not to mention 
that it is difficult to know what is meant by the unity of con- 
sciousness." 

Although, therefore, Dr. Hartley, for the sake of his doctrine 
of vibrations, concedes that there may be a Soul, he has no work 
for it to perform, but it all devolves upon the vibrations or oscil- 
lations in the brain; and that he was intent upon making them 
the source of the Mental phenomena, and not a Soul, is manifest 
not only from his efforts to establish the relation of vibrations to 
Thought, &c, but from his appeal, as we have seen in the fore- 
going quotation, to "all Physicians and Philosophers as allowing 
that motions are excited in the substance of the brain (and there- 
fore requiring no discussion), and a certain connection between 
them and the sensations of the Soul." The motions, therefore, 
or some other co-operation of the brain with the Soul in produc- 
ing the phenomena of Mind, being admitted by all, Hartley 
could have had no other object in view than to show the entire 
dependence of Mind upon the cerebral motions ; and this is also 
Dr. Priestley's opinion of the hypothesis. Every one who ad- 
mits the existence of a Soul knows that it is entirely unimpor- 
tant as to HOW the brain contributes its part in producing the 
manifestations of Mind; whether by "vibrations," "molecular 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 135 

motions," " chemical changes," "combustion of carbon or of 
phosphorus," or some inappreciable mode of action. And so, on 
the other hand, if the brain be the only source of Mind, it is 
as unimportant as to how it operates in Thinking, Willing, &c, 
as it is in relation to the Soul, and would be equally inscru- 
table. The only question of any interest relates to the Soul, so 
far as Mental phenomena are concerned ; and whoever wastes 
his breath in talking about the brain's mode of action is bent upon 
the exclusion of the Soul, however much the imputation may 
be evaded to avert "the prejudices against materialism." But 
there was something apparently novel implied by the term " vi- 
brations " and deducing them analogically from Newton's vibra- 
tions of the solar rays, and something like authority in adopting 
their application to the nerves from Newton himself. 

The same objection, therefore, exists to Hartley's doctrine, and 
through which it is equally identified with materialism, as is ap- 
plicable to the doctrine of molecular motions or chemical actions, 
that, like the latter, there is no exciting cause, as in the case of 
a self-acting Soul, of the supposed vibrations in the brain in any 
of the acts of the Will, Keflection, Judgment, Memory, Imagina- 
tion, Consciousness, or the Passions. The vibrations which are 
supposed to give rise to Sensation have alone an exciting cause, 
which consists of the physical impressions that are transmitted to 
the brain through the senses. 

Our author's doctrine derives its importance not only from his 
eminence as a writer and the ingenuity with which it is con- 
ducted, and its attempted evasion of the imputation of material- 
ism, but from the support which it yields to the prevailing chem- 
ical or molecular doctrine. It was also early seized upon by Dr. 
Priestley, warmly commended by him, and shaped into his own 
doctrine. Grant to Hartley's celebrated hypothesis of cerebral 
vibrations the merit he claims, nothing could then be alleged 
against the chemico-molecular one. 

• Dr. Hartley ingeniously predicated his hypothesis of a' sup- 
posed parallel in physical science propounded very briefly by Sir 
Isaac Newton, at the close of his "Principia" and his "Optics;" 
who, indeed, was led, by his own theory of vibrations of the solar 
rays, to surmise analogous vibrations in the nerves as the cause 
which excites the brain to action in its connection with Sensa- 



136 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tion. But he did not apply the doctrine to an exposition of the 
phenomena of Mind ; and it may be adopted by the soundest 
Spiritualist. Hartley, however, took it up where Newton left it, 
making those impressions upon the brain which are transmitted 
by external objects through the organs of sense. The reader 
will now be curious to know what Newton says upon the sub- 
ject, and the ground upon which Hartley built up, as he ad- 
mits, his Mental hypothesis of cerebral vibrations. 

"Do not the rays of light," says Newton, "in falling upon the 
bottom of the eye, excite vibrations in the tunica retina ? Which 
vibrations being propagated along the solid fibres of the optic 
nerve into the brain, cause the sense of seeing." " They may be 
propagated along solid fibres of uniform dense matter to a great 
distance, for conveying into the brain the impressions made 
upon all the organs of sense. For the motion which can con- 
tinue long in one and the same part of a body can be propagated 
a long way from one part to another, supposing the body homo- 
geneal, so that the motion may not be reflected, refracted, inter- 
rupted, or disordered, by any unevenness of the body." Then 
again he says — 

"Q. 13. Do not several sorts of rays make vibrations of several 
bignesses, which, according to their bignesses, excite sensations of 
several colors, much after the manner that the vibrations of the 
air, according to their several bignesses, excite sensations of sev- 
eral sounds ? And particularly, do not the most refrangible rays 
excite the shortest vibrations for making a sensation of deep vio- 
let, the least refrangible the largest, for making a sensation of 
deep red, and the several intermediate sorts of rays, vibrations of 
several intermediate bignesses, to make sensations of the several 
intermediate colors ?" 

Although all this is purely hypothetical, without a fact to sus- 
tain it, it transcends, incomparably, in intelligibility, consistency, 
and possibility, what we have seen of the chemical doctrine of 
the action of light upon the retina, or the explosive one, which is 
the latest in the series (p. 122). 

Dr. Priestley regards the doctrine of vibrations of the nervous 
system, set in motion by Newton's theory of light, as amply suffi- 
cient to explain all the phenomena of Mind. Thus, in his "In- 
troductory Essays " to Hartley's work, he banishes the Soul alto- 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OE THE SOUL. 137 

gether, and plants himself upon bald materialism with a com- 
mendable candor. Thus — 

"If it be admitted," he says, " as I think it must be, that, for 
any thing that yet appears, vibrations in the brain may accom- 
pany and be the cause of all our ideas, there remains only one prop- 
erty of ideas, or rather of the mind, relating to them, to which, 
if the doctrine of vibrations can be supposed to correspond, the 
whole theory will be established, and that is the association of 
ideas. For it will be seen that this single property comprehends 
all the other affections of our ideas, and thereby accounts for all 
the phenomena of the human mind, and what we usually call its 
different operations, with respect to sensations and ideas of every 
kind." " It will stagger some persons, that so much of the busi- 
ness of thinking should be made to depend upon mere matter as 
the doctrine of vibrations supposes. For, in fact, it leaves nothing 
to the province of any other principle, except the simple power of 
perception; so that if it were possible that matter could be en- 
dowed with this property, immateriality, as far as it has been sup- 
posed to belong to man, would be excluded altogether" "I rather 
think that the whole man is of some uniform composition, and 
that the property of perception, as well as the other powers that 
are termed mental, is the result (whether necessary or not) of 
such an organical structure as the brain. Consequently, that the 
tuhole man becomes extinct at death, and that we have no hope of sur- 
viving the grave but what is derived from the scheme of revelation" 

Then follows, in immediate connection with the foregoing quo- 
tation, the usual difficulty with Materialists in admitting an asso- 
ciated principle with the brain as an efficient cause in the acts of 
intellection. Thus — 

" Our having recourse to an immaterial principle, to account 
for perception and thought, is only saying, in other words, that 
we do not know in what they consist; for no one will say that 
he has any conception how the principle of thought can have any 
more relation to immateriality than to materiality." 

It only remains to be said of the foregoing doctrine, that it is 
unaccountable how so philosophical a mind as Priestley's should 
have failed of perceiving that the hypothesis of vibrations in the 
brain or nerves is without a fact to sustain it, or, granting its 
plausibility, it is equally difficult to imagine how he should have 



138 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

neglected the obvious necessity of some self-acting cause to insti- 
tute the cerebral vibrations. He plainly saw that light was neces- 
sary to set in motion the supposed vibrations in the optic nerve, 
and this at least, therefore, should have opened the eyes of such 
a man to the equal necessity of a distinct cause for the vibrations 
in the brain to which he imputes all mental phenomena. But, 
as we shall have seen, it is the besetting fault of every material- 
istic hypothesis. 

Soon afterwards appeared his work on "Matter and Spirit," in 
which he endeavors to fortify the materialistic doctrine. In the 
mean time, however, the difficulty does not relate in the least to 
the materiality or immateriality of a Thinking Principle, known 
as the Soul ; for it is just as difficult to conceive of one as of the 
other. Nor is there any more reason why there should not exist 
an immaterial than a material substance. One is just as probable 
as the other, in an abstract sense. Either "would be on common 
ground as to our means of knowledge, since the existence of the 
material could be known only by those phenomena which are 
supposed to denote an immaterial Principle; nor does there ap- 
pear to be any other objection to the hypothesis of a material 
Soul than those which I ha*ve already made (p. 128). The argu- 
ment, therefore, which turns upon the immateriality of the Think- 
ing Principle is a mere fiction, a mere pretense, as it were, to 
evade the question as to the Soul. But since the Materialist re- 
jects the manifestations of Mind as any evidence of the existence 
of a Thinking Principle, it is especially an object of this work to 
institute precisely parallel examples between the results of the 
operation of physical causes upon the brain and the phenomena 
of Mind, and to thus put an end to the assumption that we can 
not reason from the latter to a self-acting Principle because we 
do not know in what it consists. 

It should be said, in conclusion, of Priestley's materialism, that 
there existed in his case the remarkable inconsistency of an op- 
position to infidelity, which it is impossible to reconcile with his 
rejection of a Soul, and his avowal that — u We have consequently 
no hope of surviving the grave but what is derived from the scheme of 
revelation." Had he ever carried his faith into the Narrative of 
Creation, he would there have found, in a wonderfully summary 
statement, that man was created, in all but his body, in a condi- 



MATERIALITY OR IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL. 139 

tion total^ - distinct from matter; that he was contradistinguished 
from matter in being endowed not only with a Soul but Yital 
Principle ; for, as if anticipating the liability of confounding his 
Intellectual and Yital attributes with his material body, it is af- 
firmed that, after the body was formed out of " the dust of the 
ground," the Creator proceeded to endow the fabric with Life 
and a Soul, as expressed in the most intelligible, popular lan- 
guage — "and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living Soul." And it is this which Materialism 
rejects as a worthless thing. The Hebrew for living Soul has no 
application to animals, who are endowed, however, with an anal- 
ogous Principle, as will appear when I come to the subject of In- 
stinct in Chapter XYI. 

Materialism, however, has devised an ingenious scheme for re- 
ducing man to the mere condition of inanimate matter; laying 
its foundation by first resolving the Principle of Life into the 
forces which govern the inorganic world, under the doctrine of 
the "Correlation or Equivalence and Conservation of Forces." 
I shall, therefore, next proceed to inquire into the merits of this 
new scheme. 



140 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CORRELATION OR EQUIVALENCE AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 
— EQUIVALENCE OF PHYSICAL, VITAL, AND MENTAL FORCES. — 
MATTER AND FORCE. 

In the farther prosecution of our subject I shall now pursue 
materialism in medias res. In the fulfillment of this purpose we 
must go first to its latest, and, as denominated, its "scientific foun- 
dation." We are thus conducted at once into the novelties of 
the "Correlation and Conservation of Forces" or, as also denomi- 
nated, the Equivalence or Metamorphosis of Forces;" which is a late 
invention to serve as a basis for Organic Lfe, and Materialism as 
it respects the Soul — and this accomplished, atheism becomes an 
easy achievement upon the same premises. The doctrine gradu- 
ally insinuates itself by first reducing living beings, in a physical 
sense, to a level with inanimate matter. It is a primary object 
with Materialism to determine the latter point ; for in so doing 
it discards all the evidences of a peculiar power known as the 
Vital Principle, or Vital Force, or Plastic Power (for these are 
equivalent terms) ; the evidences consisting of the peculiar com- 
position, structure, functions, laws, and phenomena of living be- 
ings, and to which there is not the least resemblance in any ob- 
ject in the inorganic world. The Correlation doctrine, on the 
contrary, derives its premises wholly from the manifestations of 
inorganic matter, and it reasons from these premises to their 
causes; while Comte-like, it denies all such inductive philosophy 
to the phenomena or manifestations of a Principle of Life. It 
offers not a single fact having any bearing upon the question ; 
and its identification of the Vital Force with the forces of inor- 
ganic matter is the greatest violation of inductive philosophy that 
has ever been inflicted upon science. Having derived its prem- 
ises from the steam-engine, the combustion of charcoal, the effects 
of heat upon simple matter, electricity, the formation of crystals, 
and experiments in the chemist's laboratory, it assumes that its 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 141 

identification of the Yital Force with physical forces is "conclu- 
sively demonstrated." The foundation of the scheme being thus 
laid, this absurd assumption is then applied analogically, and in 
a summary manner, to the Soul. With the same violation of all 
philosophical rules, it equally discards all the peculiar, unique, 
and infinitely diversified phenomena of Mind as a ground of rea- 
soning ; and assuming that its ground in regard to the Yital 
Force is established, and as the phenomena of Mind are manifes- 
tations of force, all mental processes are equally due to a force 
that is derived from the inorganic world. Materialism then pro- 
ceeds upon this basis to discard all the Designs in nature as sup- 
plying any evidence of a Personal Creator, and that what is called 
God is nothing but the forces and laws of nature ; and thence it 
deduces the doctrine of " Creative Law," or spontaneity of living 
beings, and the developmental schemes. 

The reader can not fail of discerning at once as well the mon- 
strous sophistry as the equally unscientific mode of thus disguis- 
ing the subject. The phenomena or manifestations of the inor- 
ganic world form the ground of inductions in that department 
of nature, and can have no possible connection with our conclu- 
sions as to organic beings, unless a correspondence can be shown. 
For this purpose we must go to the organic being himself, and 
interrogate in the same way his position in nature ; look at his 
manifestations, as seen in his peculiar composition, his structure, 
his functions, his infinite variety of vital, intellectual, and in- 
stinctive phenomena, which can alone conduct us to a knowledge 
of the powers and laws by which he is animated and governed. 
This only " scientific " rule, the only ground of inductive philos- 
ophy, or which common sense should recognize, assures us that 
we are far better informed of a peculiar Principle of Life, and of 
an Intellectual Principle, than we can possibly be, through their 
very limited manifestations, of the constitution and forces of in- 
organic matter. And what of God ? By the same logical rule of 
interpretation we know more of the Creator through His works 
than we do of the works themselves ; although, as we shall see, 
it is one of the expedients of Atheism in approaching the Theist 
to speak of Him as the " Unknowable." It would add nothing, 
indeed, to our knowledge of Him if He were manifested to us in 
the figure of man. In our conceptions of Christ we never think 



142 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of His Person, but of what lie said and performed. His bodily 
appearance would convey to us nothing of what he was or is. 
And so it is with all mankind who have passed into history. 
What would be thought of him who should pronounce Homer 
" unknowable " because we have no record of his existence ? "We 
should be apt to conclude that the objector had never heard of 
his works. But he was one so well known by these tokens that 
seven cities contended for the honor of his birthplace. Now 
" the Unknowable " of the Atheist has a great advantage of 
Homer in respect of works. We know the illustrious of former 
ages far better than they were known to their cotemporaries, and 
a thousand-fold better than we know most of the people with 
whom we are daily conversant ; and have no more doubt of 
their former existence, through their mental productions, actions, 
&c, than of the existence of the sensible objects immediately be- 
fore us. To affirm, therefore, that God is "unknowable" is the 
shallowest pretense of Atheism. Indeed, we know so much of 
Him that it has been well said by the earliest writer — "Canst 
thou find out the Almighty to perfection V And just so, in the 
same logical manner, we come to find out far more about the 
Principle of Life and the Soul than can be possibly done in re- 
spect to matter and its associated forces. 

The Materialist, however, having planted himself, in the man- 
ner described, upon the ground of simple matter, advances to an 
assault upon the Soul, and finally besieges the " Gates of Heaven." 
We must, therefore, follow the doctrine from its incipient designs 
upon Organic Life through its menacing approaches to material- 
ism, where the main battle is to be fought. Organic Life and the 
Soul being rescued from the delusive snare of the " Correlation 
or Equivalence of Forces," atheism will be simultaneously bereft 
of its new foundation. 

Glimpses of the doctrine under consideration had long ago 
made their appearance, though not employed for the subversion 
of physiological science, or to subserve the purposes of material- 
ism. Thus Howard remarks, in his " History of the Earth and 
Mankind " (1797), that— "I am apt to believe light to be the pure 
principle of fire, and of the electric matter, of which these are 
modifications" Dr. S. L. Metcalfe, in his work on " Caloric " 
(1843), whose opinion will be quoted hereafter, was one of the 



COKRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 143 

first that elaborated the doctrine so as to apply it to speculative 
purposes. 

The doctrine before us assumes that what have hitherto been 
regarded as distinct forces of nature are convertible into each 
other, or that they are modifications of one force, or different 
modes of a common force, or metamorphoses of one force* (being 
equivalent terms), its modifications appearing under the aspects 
of heat, light, electricity, magnetism, gravitation, chemical affinity, 
cohesive attraction, Vitality, Eeason, Instinct, and, in its ultimate 
tendency, Creative Power, or "Unknowable" or " Unknown 
Cause." These conditions of force are equivalent terms in their 
relations to different conditions of matter. The doctrine assumes, 
also, that this common force undergoes no waste, and never ceases 
to exist, as implied by the term " conservation," but that when it 
loses one aspect it takes on another — as light, heat, magnetism, 
Vital force, &c, are converted into one or the other according 
to their respective manifestations. But, although these modifi- 

* It will be interesting to the medical reader to learn that the foregoing doctrine 
is intended also as a basis for the whole science of Medicine. This purpose is fully 
comprehended in a single sentence in Dr. H. Bence Jones's Croonian Lectures, on 
Matter and Force, for 1868 : 

" The doctrine," he says, "of the Conservation of Energy, and of the inseparability 
of matter and force, will lead to an entire change not only in Physiology and Pathol- 
ogy, but also in that most practical part of medicine, Therapeutics." 
• The medical reader will be also interested to know how this doctrine enables him 
to learn what "constitutes disease, "and its mode of treatment, as presented in the 
following luminous exposition : 

"Perhaps, "says the eminent Lecturer, "we shall ultimately be able to estimate 
the increase or diminution of any one motion which, by affecting all other motions in 
a part or in the whole body, constitutes disease. When the disease arises from in- 
creased action, we shall restore that normal quantity and quality of motion in the 
body on which the health depends, by decreasing the motion or adding to the resist- 
ance to conversion ; and when the disease arises from diminished action, we shall 
attain the same result by increasing the motion or lessening the resistance to conver- 
sion." ! ! "The medicines which are taken into the body have the same incapability 
as food to create or annihilate force ; but they possess chemical energies by which, 
wherever they go, they take part in the motions of oxidation and nutrition which are 
going on there ; and according to their chemical properties, they add to the motions, 
or increase the resistance to the motions that constitute disease. The questions, then, 
which must be answered before we can obtain clear ideas of the actions of medi- 
cines in the body, are — 1. What are the different motions which occur in the body ? 
and how are these different motions related to one another ? and, 2. How do different 
agents or medicines increase or diminish these different motions which occur in the 
different organs and textures ?" 



144 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

cations of force are presented to us as having a substantial exist- 
ence, and ruling the material world, they are also said to be mere- 
ly " modes of motion," consisting in nothing. It is also the usage 
of this class of thinkers to waste their efforts in proving what 
every one admits, namely, that matter is necessary to force as wit- 
nessed in the inorganic world ; and therefore say the Materialists, 
there is no other force in living beings than such as attends or- 
dinary matter, and can not be separated from it. That is the 
logic. Such has become the proselyting spirit of materialism, 
that this most difficult subject for all but the well-stored scientific 
mind has already presented its sophistry to the wonder-loving 
public, who are readily deluded by the bold assumptions, and the 
confident appeals to " modern science." 

As it is my present object to show that the doctrine of the 
V Correlation and Conservation of Forces " excludes all but the 
forces that appertain to inorganic matter from living beings, and 
therefore expunges the Soul, my remarks will now bear particu- 
larly upon the vital aspect of the subject. But in the first place 
we will permit the advocates of the doctrine to express it in their 
own language. Thus, Mr. Grove, one of the ablest and earliest 
projectors of the " Correlation and Conservation of Forces," re- 
marks, in his elaborate Essay upon the subject, that — 

"We thus get a reciprocity of action between the force which 
unites the molecules of matter and the magnetic force, and 
through the medium of the latter the correlation of the attrac- 
tion of aggregation with the other modes of force may be estab- 
lished. I believe that the same principles and mode of reason- 
ing as has been adopted in this essay might be applied to the or- 
ganic as well as to the inorganic world ; and that muscular force, 
animal and vegetable heat, &c, might, and at some time will, be 
shown to have similar definite correlations." 

Dr. William B. Carpenter, in his Essay on the " Correlation 
of the Physical and Vital Forces," speaking in behalf of the pow- 
erful school of materialism, and after paying his respects to the 
Vitalists in the following manner — 

"Another class of reasoners have cut the knot which they 
could not untie [we shall see], by attributing all the actions of 
living bodies for which Physics and Chemistry can not account 
to a hypothetical ' Vital Principle ' — a shadowy agency that does 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 145 

every thing in its own way, but refuses to be made the subject 
of scientific examination [just the reverse]; like the 'od-force,' 
or the ' spiritual power,' to which the lovers of the marvellous 
are so fond of attributing the mysterious movements of turning 
and tilting tables" — goes on to pronounce the scientific founda- 
tion of materialism, in the derivation of the Yital force from 
Heat, Light, and Electricity. Thus our Author — 

"In a memoir of my own, 'on the Mutual Eelations of. the. Vi- 
tal and Physical Forces,' published in the Philosophical Transac- 
tions for 1850, I aimed to show that the general doctrine of the 
' Correlation of the Physical Forces ' propounded by Mr. Grove 
was equally applicable to those Vital forces which must be as- 
sumed as the moving powers in the production of purely physio- 
logical phenomena ; these forces being generated in living bodies 
by the transformation of Light, Heat, and Chemical Action 
supplied by the world around, and being given bach again, either 
during their life, or after its cessation, chiefly in Motion and 
Heat, but also, to a less degree, in Light and Electricity." 

Such is the foundation for Mental Materialism. Dr. Carpen- 
ter's able American Editor, Dr. Youmans, in referring to his 
" argument," remarks that — 

'As a creature of organic nutrition, borrowing matter and 
force from the outward world ; as a being of feeling and sensibil- 
ity, of intellectual pow,er and multiform activities, man must be 
regarded as amenable to the great law that forces are convertible 
and indestructible ; and as Psychology and Sociology — the Science 
of Mind and the science of society — have to deal constantly with 
different, phases and forms of human energy, the New Principle 
must be of the profoundest import in relation to these great 
subjects." 

And thus Professor Justus Liebig — although we shall ulti- 
mately see that he advocates in the same work ("Animal or Or- 
ganic Chemistry, applied to Physiology and Pathology ") the ex- 
istence of a "Vital Principle as controlling the chemical forces" — 

"In the animal body," he says, "we recognize as the ultimate 
cause of all force only one cause, the Chemical Action which the 
elements of the food and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise 
on each other. The only known ultimate cause of Vital Force, 
either in animals or in plants, is A Chemical Process. If this 

10 



146 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

be prevented, the phenomena of life do not manifest themselves. 11 
"All Vital activity arises from the mutual action of the oxygen 
of the atmosphere and the elements of the food." 

Professor ViKCHOW", the distinguished physiological Microscopist, 
says that — " The old doctrine of a Vital Power is not merely er- 
roneous, but Si pure superstition, which can not conceal its relation- 
ship with the doctrine of the devil, and the search after the philoso- 
pher's stone. 11 And yet he speaks freely of the existence of a "Vi- 
tal Force." 

Dr. Jones, already quoted (p. 110), remarks in his " Croonian 
Lectures on Matter and Force," 1868, that — " The stuff which 
takes part in the living actions, and the forces which are inhe- 
rent in that stuff are there, and indestructible and inseparable. 
Inorganic matter and inorganic force always exist together in 
living things, [but the matter not in an inorganic condition] ; so 
that if a separable living force be also present, then we must ad- 
mit that two totally different relations of ponderable matter and 
force must obtain in the same matter at the same time. The 
unity of nature will at least be preserved by our hesitation to 
admit the assumption of a force capable of creation and annihila- 
tion, until some conclusive evidence is obtained that there actually 
is in living things such a force or forces capable of being separated 
entirely from the matter of which they are made. 11 

There are two important assumptions \p. the foregoing quota- 
tion — 1. Inorganic matter does not exist in " living things." It is 
all in an organic state ; not a particle unorganized, even the bones. 
2. There is no inorganic force that has any participation in the 
constitution or functions of living things. There is but one 
force, the Vital, and it is this which not only presides over all the 
functions of the body, but holds in combination all the element- 
ary constituents of the organic compounds, and in absolute oppo- 
tion to all inorganic forces ; and one of the certain proofs of this 
is the violence with which the inorganic forces take possession 
of the animal fabric after death, and quickly break up the organ- 
ism into its elementary parts. Why do they never manifest the 
least tendency of this nature till after death, unless for the reason 
of the existence of a Vital Force which is completely opposed to 
their action? The Vital Principle is perishable; and it is the 
failure of that Principle which virtually constitutes the death of 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OE FORCES. 147 

the organic being, animal or plant. All this I have demon- 
strated, and to a great extent, in the Institutes of Medicine; and 
although long before the World, no one has attempted to invali- 
date that demonstration ; and this I hold to be a proof that the 
" conclusive evidence " demanded was then before our Author. 

At a subsequent stage of the foregoing Croonian Lectures, and 
by the same process of reasoning, the Soul of man is subjected 
to the same ridicule as we have recently seen of the Principle of 
Life from the slashing pen of Dr. Carpenter — 

" The Spiritualist" says Dr. Jones, " who still holds the prim- 
itive idea of the perfect separation of matter and force may find 
full occupation for his reason in weighing the evidence on 
which his belief or internal conviction rests ; but he must leave 
the investigation of the foundations of natural knowledge to 
those who can see no reason for faith in witches, ghosts, trans- 
mutations, and transmigrations. There are some who think lit- 
tle of scientific truth, but, comparatively speaking, care much to 
recognize the Almighty Will as the primary cause of all things. 
We, who search for truth above all things, are compelled, by our 
belief in the inseparability of matter and force in the abiological 
sciences, to work out the inquiry how far this inseparability 
holds true in the biological sciences also." 

It is sufficiently manifest, therefore, and it will become more 
and more so as the discussion advances, that a primary object of 
the doctrine of the " Correlation or Equivalence of Forces " is 
not only an identification of the Principle of Life with the forces 
of inorganic matter, but as a logical consequence the Soul also, 
and that whoever, therefore, rejects a Principle of Life, and main- 
tains that living beings are governed by the forces of inorganic 
matter, necessarily discards the doctrine of a Thinking Principle. 
And if, as we have seen, the unique and infinitely diversified 
phenomena of Life be rejected as evidences of the special nature 
of their Cause, ft should be equally so with the phenomena of 
Mind. * 

Such, therefore, is not only the inevitable consequence of the 
identification of the Vital Principle with the forces of inorganic 
matter, but it is often presented by the advocates of the doctrine 
as a logical sequence in respect to the Soul. Thus an able Pro- 
fessor in Yale College, Dr. Gr. F. Barker, in a lecture on the 



U8 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

u Correlation of Vital and Physical Forces" (in Transactions of 
the New York American Institute, 1870), after stating, in the 
usual manner of the materialistic school, that sun-light is con- 
verted into the Vital Force of plants, and by them stored up for 
animals to become their Yital Force, remarks that — 

" No doubt can be entertained that the actual energy of the 
muscle is simply the converted potential carbon of the food. A 
muscle, therefore, like a steam-engine, is a machine for converting 
the potential energy of carbon into motion." 

Our Author next approaches the Mind, and after referring to 
Melloni's experiments in 1832, to show that changes of tempera- 
ture occur in the scalp, and therefore inferentially within the 
skull, [but very far less than in the face,] according to mental 
processes, passions, &c, and remarking that — -"In explanation 
of this production of heat the analogy of the muscle at once sug- 
gests itself" — then proceeds to say, after the usual manner — 

" Nor do those facts rest upon physical evidence alone. Chem- 
istry teaches that Thought Force, like muscular force, comes from 
food ; and demonstrates that the Force evolved by the brain, like 
that produced by the muscle, comes not from the disintegration 
of its own tissue, but is the converted energy of burning carbon 
[the prevailing doctrine in materialism, p. 90]. Can we longer 
doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a machine/or the conversion of 
energy ? Can we longer refuse to believe that our thought is, in 
some mysterious way, CORRELATED TO THE NATURAL FORCES? 
And this even in face of the fact that it has never yet been 
measured ?" 

Such, again, is a very exact representation of the " Correlation 
of physical and Yital Forces," and its application as a substitute 
for the Soul ; or the materialistic philosophy of evolving the 
phenomena of Mind out of " burning carbon " (p. 90, etc.). 

It may be useful here to remark, in connection with the fore- 
going quotation, that in all acts of the Mind that are independ- 
ent oof Sensation, or influences that come to the brain through the 
medium of the senses, the Mind, as I have demonstrated, brings 
itself into action, and in all the former cases Sensation merely 
rouses the Mind to action, when it may or may not so act upon 
the brain as to give rise to manifestations in the voluntary and 
involuntary organs. In the one case it is the Will projecting the 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 149 

nervous influence upon the voluntary muscles ; while in the other, 
or where the involuntary organs are affected, it is the Passions 
projecting the same influence upon the heart, stomach, kidneys, 
blood-vessels, &c. Now, then, in respect to the heat which, as in 
the foregoing quotation, is constantly assumed by Materialists as 
a cause instead of its real condition as a consequence, its produc- 
tion is owing, in the examples presented, to the action of the 
blood-vessels which is excited by the sudden determination of 
the nervous influence upon them when certain Passions, surprise, 
&c, are in operation. And thus a remote consequence of Mental 
processes is assumed as the cause, and made to constitute the Soul 
of man. The general heat of the body, which is also assumed as 
the cause of vital actions, is at all times a consequence of the action 
of the vascular system maintained in operation by the stimulus 
of the blood ; but, as we have seen, the nervous influence, as de- 
veloped by certain Passions, may also be rendered a powerful 
stimulus to the action of the heart and blood-vessels, from which 
results an increased elaboration of heat and sense of "burning" 
in the face. But what reply will the Correlators make to the 
totally opposite effect of certain other Passions upon the temper- 
ature of the " scalp," face, &c, as when Fear blanches the skin 
and reduces its natural temperature over the whole surface of 
the body? And here comes up the profound problem relative 
to the nervous influence — that it is rendered stimulating or de- 
pressing according to the nature of the causes that may bring it 
into operation, whether Mental or physical, according to para- 
lels already instituted ; when we saw that Joy, Love, Anger, &c, 
are stimulating, Fear, Grief, &c, depressing, and of physical 
agents, alcohol applied to the brain rouses the action of the 
heart and blood-vessels, and an infusion of tobacco depresses 
their action (p. 43). This special view of the subject is exten- 
sively investigated in the Author's Institutes of Medicine. 

The profound in one science, if superficial in others, are apt to 
imagine that they have compassed all the sciences, and to gather 
into the fold of that science all the phenomena of Nature. Thus 
Sir Humphrey Davy plainly saw that it is impossible to explain 
the phenomena of Life by any external laws. But habit, and 
ignorance of Physiology, inclined him, like other distinguished 
Chemists, to think it — "Possible that one law alone may govern 



150 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

and act upon matter — an energy of mutation [something like 
' Correlation of Forces '] impressed by the Will of the Deity ; a 
law which might be called the law of animation, tending to pro- 
duce the greatest sum of perception, the greatest possible sum of 
happiness." — Essays on Heat, Respiration, &c. 

Now no believer in a Personal God doubts that He could have 
done all this just as easily as He thought proper to do otherwise. 
But these Philosophers have very generally, at the same time, a 
consciousness that they are at war with nature ; and perhaps this 
can not be shown more impressively than in their own language. 
Thus, Sir Humphrey says — "It may appear absurd to suppose 
any analogy between attraction and gravitation, repulsion and 
projection, and the laws of Life." And why absurd ? Because 
Sir Humphrey knew that there is no "analogy" between the phe- 
nomena of Life and those of inorganic matter; and the only proof 
which he offers of the analogy is the following interrogatory, 
which follows immediately the foregoing admission: "Is it not, 
however, perceptive action," he asks, " which must uniformly be 
accomplished with some peculiar motion in the nervous system, 
analogous to repulsion and projection ? Is not the association 
of perception and irritative motions a law analogous to attraction 
and gravitation V\\ 

Such, again, is the amount of fact and of logic, as I shall still 
have frequent occasion to show, that is brought in favor of the 
chemical and physical doctrines of Life ; and I may add, also, that 
we have here, from this great mind, one of the earliest germs of 
the " Correlation and Equivalence of Forces," and Sir Humphrey 
even suggested it as a basis for materialism in respect to the 
Soul as well as to Life ; for in the latter clause of our quotation 
" attraction and gravitation " are rendered equivalent to the Soul 
in being the " law of association between perception and irritative 
motions." 

A truthful statement can scarcely be expected from one who 
delights in the propagation of atheism where misrepresentation 
can subserve his purposes. But as Truth has nothing to fear 
from its perversion, we will hear the great Leader in the so-called 
" New Philosophy," as to the matter of the YlTAL Foece. Thus, 
then. Dr. Louis Buchner, in his renowned work on "Force and 
Matter' 1 — 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 151 

" The notion," he says, " of a Yital Force is reduced to a walk- 
ing shadow, and exists only in the brains of such individuals as 
have lagged behind the science. All those who have specially 
studied any branch of natural science touching the organic world 
agree now in regard to Yital Force; and the term itself has become 
so obnoxious that it is rarely used." 

But what of the "obnoxious terms" materialism, atheism? 
Vide, for answer, our Author's Preface to the Third and Fourth 
Editions of his work — and other writers, as will be seen, who are 
upon the same side. And the following quotation from the 
above work, contradictory of the foregoing, will show the. worth- 
lessness, insincerity, and rudeness of the opinion expressed' in the 
preceding quotation. Thus — 

"Life," he says, "is a peculiar and most complicated form of 
mechanical action, in which the usual mechanical laws act under 

THE MOST UNUSUAL AND MOST VARIED CONDITIONS, and in which 

the final results are separated from the original causes by 
such a number of intermediate links that THEIR CONNECTION is 
NOT EASILY ESTABLISHED." 

Carl Yogt, the Author of the celebrated expression that — 
" Thought stands in the same relation to the brain as the bile to the 
liver, or urine to the kidneys" should be heard on the fundamental 
question before us — 

"The appeal to a Yital Force," says Yogt, "is merely sl peri- 
phrasis of ignorance. It constitutes one of those back doors of 
which there are so many in science, and which are the constant 
refuge of indolent minds who will not take the trouble to inves- 
tigate what appears incomprehensible, but are satisfied with ac- 
cepting the apparent miracle." 

The eminent Psychologist, Herbert Spencer, also forcibly 
justifies our position, that the doctrine of the "Correlation of 
Forces" is intended to serve as a basis for Materialism. I sim- 
ply quote a comprehensive statement now, and shall hereafter 
employ this distinguished authority for the purpose of showing 
the best of the grounds upon which this "New Philosophy " re- 
poses its claims to an " advanced stage of Science." Thus our 
author, in his First Principles " — 

"Yarious classes of facts unite to prove that the Law of Meta- 
mmphosis which holds among physical forces holds equally between 



152 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

these and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable 
which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, &c, are alike 
transformable into each other, and INTO THOSE MODES of the un- 
knowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought ; 
those, in their turns, being directly and indirectly re-transform- 
able into the ORIGINAL shapes." 

Were a Principle of Organic Life admitted, distinct from the 
forces of inorganic matter, it would be a vain attempt to discard 
the Soul or a Creative Power ; since, if it were conceded that the 
special manifestations of Life were indicative, as they are conclu- 
sive, of the existence of a peculiar Force, entirely different from 
those of the inorganic world, it would necessarily follow that the 
same philosophy must equally apply to the source of Thought 
and the Author of nature. But as the case now stands, they are 
all simply modifications of one force; and since "force and mat- 
ter are imperishable," we are consoled by the reflection that the 
so-called Soul will be " immortal " — but when the body dies, it 
will be transmuted into heat, electricity, magnetism, &c, accord- 
ing to the matter with which it may become associated. - The 
so-called Creator takes any of these conditions of force that are 
necessary to effect the organization of matter so that it shall re- 
sult in the production of living beings. Such are the issues, 
either directly, or indirectly implied. 

If it has been hitherto impossible to ascertain whether heat, 
light, gravitation, electricity, magnetism, &c, be absolute properties 
of matter, or in themselves distinct essences, or the results of 
some ethereal medium inappreciable by the senses, or, as now- 
assumed, mere modes of motion, how great must be the absurdity 
of attempting to identify, or correlate, or transmute, or assimilate 
in any other mode, those several realities whose phenomena are 
so peculiarly characteristic of each one respectively, and so forci- 
bly declare the individuality of each, and address themselves so 
strongly to the senses that no one, until a recent time, has delib- 
erately attempted the enterprise of such a conflict with nature, 
and to thus establish a fame upon the ruins of this department 
of Science. It is enough to assure us if we contemplate the man- 
ifestations of these principles, or whatever they may be, and their 
laws in the inorganic world alone ; and, on coming to the organic, 
what do we witness here? Do we discern any thing in the phe- 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 153 

nornena of Life that should lead us to " correlate " the causes or 
forces and their laws which give rise to these phenomena, with 
the forces and laws that rule in the inorganic kingdom ? Cer- 
tainly nothing whatever. Every one knows that they are totally 
different from each other in every detail, and that as soon as the 
living being is dead, man, animal, or plant, every one of these 
characteristic phenomena has disappeared, and no one of them 
can be reproduced, with all the aid of heat, electricity, &c. ; while, 
on the contrary, a corresponding demonstration of our philosophy 
is seen in the immediate onslaught of the forces of matter upon 
the body which has lost its power of resistance to these forces, 
and their reckless destruction of the entire organization. Con- 
template, for a moment, the work of that wonderful Principle of 
Life, whose creative power in the perpetuation of organic beings 
has been substituted for the Creator Himself, and which defies 
the ordinary forces of physics and chemistry as they were set at 
naught by the Creator when He organized the living kingdom 
out of the " dust of the earth." See how, like the Almighty, it 
incorporates, through the mechanism which He established, the 
elements of matter into organic compounds, no one of which pos- 
sesses less than three elements, often many — the blood not less 
than seventeen — in intimate union, while no inorganic compound 
has more than two elements in the same intimate union ; nor can all 
the art of the Chemist, with all the forces of nature that he can 
summon to his aid, reproduce the most simple, unequivocal organ- 
ic compound, although he have in his workshop the exact propor- 
tions of the elem'ents of an organic substance which he has just 
decompounded. And next, carry your attention to the structure 
of both animals and plants, where will you find any thing in the 
mineral kingdom analogous to the most simple tissue of the hum- 
blest insect or plant, or any of their most simple compounds ? 

Universal observation has established the fact that physical 
and chemical forces, in their relation to the union of the elements 
of matter, terminate in binary compounds and the simplest juxta- 
position of the molecules of matter ; nor have they ever been 
known to effect an undoubted organic compound of the simplest 
nature, as will be more fully shown when I come to the sub- 
ject of spontaneity of living beings. But in the mean time I may 
say that they can no more build up an organic fabric than a pile 



154 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of crumbling stones can work themselves into a temple. If we 
ask the Materialist for a parallel in the inorganic world with a 
living being, his only answer is, U A crystal of salt or of quartz, 
or a diamond, or a steam-engine." And thus he abandons the 
ground with assumed parallels, one from nature, and the other 
from art, which, of course, have not the slightest affinity with 
organic structure, not even in the aggregation of the molecules 
of crystals, but founded alone upon the superficial symmetry that 
captivates the eye ; or in the case of the engine, because, as we 
have seen, it is worked by the combustion of carbon. Never- 
theless, we shall ultimately see that an assumption is made that 
certain compounds which have been considered of an organic 
nature have been artificially imitated. But we shall also see that 
they yield no sign of organic matter, living or dead, and that the 
problem is beyond the reach of chemistry. 

What, also, can be more opposed to the special phenomena 
attendant on every species of foroe than the assumption that they 
are all resolvable into modifications of mere motion — unsubstan- 
tial, baseless — nothing moved ? The conception of such a condi- 
tion is impossible. On the contrary, I say, is not something more 
implied by the great variety of specific qualities by which heat, 
light, electricity, magnetism, the vital force, are individually dis- 
tinguished, than abstract modes of motion? Each of these forces 
has, also, a long code of laws peculiar to itself, and founded upon 
the phenomena or effects that are peculiar to each, and these laws 
making up the sum of the Sciences. Is it a mere mode of mo- 
tion upon which the Sciences repose ? Is it shnply nothing by 
which the tree is dashed to the ground by a thunderbolt, and 
which sends its impulse through the air for many miles ? Is it 
merely nothing which is pent up in a cloud till discharged into 
another cloud that contains less than nothing, and which are said 
to be positively and negatively electrified ? Is there not as much 
a discharge of something which produces the impulse in the air 
and gives rise to sound, as the bell is something which, by its 
vibrations, does exactly the same; or as the stone is something 
which occasions analogous undulations in water when cast upon 
its surface ? Consider, also, some of the phenomena of Light— 
those of the prismatic rays, for example. Can mere motion be 
separated in this manner into numerous parts, all possessing very 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 155 

remarkable properties peculiar to each — each ray occupying a cer- 
tian definite proportion of the spectrum ; and which imply as 
much the existence of something as the substratum of motion as 
does the motion of a hail-stone in its descent to the earth, and in 
its collision with the leaves upon which light exerts its no less 
manifest action — to say nothing of the decomposing, chemical 
rays, which are as positive in their action upon the chloride of 
silver as an acid in decomposing an alkaline carbonate? 

The parallel between the Force with which the voluntary mus- 
cles inflict a blow, the impulses of the heart, &c, and the violence 
of an electric shock, is worthy of a " science " which identifies 
the Yital Force with electricity and caloric; and it is only an 
extension of the same principle which ascribes the movements 
of a table to the mere contact of a finger. It must be conceded, 
however, that there is a consistency in this School which denies 
the existence of a Principle of Life and a Soul, and imputes all 
their phenomena to motion, in regarding the phenomena of elec- 
tricity, caloric, &c, as owing to an ideal motion of nothing. 

Let us now have an exposition of this philosophy of Life and 
of Mind which turns upon the molecular structure of a crystal; 
and I have at my hand an admirable exposition of the applica- 
tion of "Correlated Force" to the problems of Life and Mind, 
and of the process of reasoning pursued by Materialists in as- 
cending by a series of assumed analogies, or rather, exact coinci- 
dences, from the formation of a crystal up to man ; and this not 
only as it respects his Organization and Principle of Life, but, 
somewhat equivocally, his very Mind. The high Authority 
whom I quote offers, also, an ingenious exemplification of the 
manner in which the difficulties of Materialism are evaded and 
the doctrine thus persuasively and blandly enforced. Thus, then, 
the erudite Professor Tyndall, in his Address at the meeting of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1868 — 

" There have been writers who have affirmed that the Pyra- 
mids of Egypt were the productions of nature ; and in his early 
youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote an essay with an express 
object of refuting this notion. We noiv regard the Pyramids as 
the work of men's hands, aided, probably, by machinery of which 
no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming work- 
ers toiling at those vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and 



156 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the 
whip of the architect, placing the stones in their proper positions. 
The blocks, in this case, were moved by a power external to 
themselves, and the final form of the Pyramid expressed the 
thought of its human builder. [And now for the application.] 

"Let us pass from this illustration of building power to another 
of a different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly 
evaporated, the water which holds the salt in solution disappears, 
but the salt itself remains behind. At a certain stage of concen- 
tration the salt can no longer retain the liquid form; its particles, 
or molecules, as they are called, begin to deposit themselves as 
minute solids. As evaporation continues solidification goes on, 
and we finally obtain, through the clustering together of innu- 
merable molecules, a finite mass of salt of a definite form. What 
is this form ? It sometimes seems a mimicry of the architecture 
of Egypt. We have little Pyramids built by the salt, terrace 
above terrace from base to apex, forming thus a series of steps 
resembling those up which the Egyptian traveller is dragged by 
his guides. The human mind is as little disposed to look at these 
Pyramidal salt-crystals without farther question as at the Pyra- 
mids of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, 
then, are those salt Pyramids built up? Guided by analogy, 
you may suppose that, swarming among the constituent mole- 
cules of the salt there is an invisible population, guided and co- 
erced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic blocks in 
their positions. This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor do 
I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one. The sci- 
entific idea is that the molecules act upon each other without the 
intervention of slave-labor ; that they attract each other and re- 
pel each other at certain definite points, and in certain definite 
directions ; and that the pyramidal form is the result of this play 
of attraction and repulsion. 

" The tendency on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow 
into shape, to assume definite forms in obedience to the definite 
action of force, is, as I have said, all-pervading. Incipient life, in 
fact, manifests itself throughout the whole of what we call inor- 
ganic nature." ! ! 

"And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard 
as a dead mineral to a living grain of corn. When it is examined 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 157 

by polarized light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed 
in crystals are observed. And why ? Because the architecture 
of the grain resembles in some degree the architecture of the 
crystal. In the corn the molecules are also set in definite posi- 
tions, from which they act upon the light. But what has built to- 
gether the molecules of the corn? I have already said regarding 
crystalline architecture, that you may, if you please, consider the 
atoms and molecules to be placed in position by a power exter- 
nal to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now. 
Bat if, in the case of crystals, you have neglected the notion of 
an external architect [or .Vital Principle], I think you are bound 
to reject it now, and to conclude that the molecules of the corn 
are. self-posited by the forces with, which they act on each other. It 
would be poor philosophy to invoke an external agent [or Vital 
Principle] in the one case, and to reject it in the other." ! — A seed 
is then supposed to be planted in the earth, and the same philos- 
ophy is then carried to the germination of the seed and the full 
development of the plant. " The duly expanded mind," the Pro- 
fessor then goes on, "would see in the process and its consumma- 
tion an instance of the play of molecular force. It would see ev- 
ery molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions and re- 
pulsions exerted between it and other molecules." — "But I must 
go still farther, and affirm that in the eye of Science the animal 
body is just as much the product of molecular force as the stalk 
and ear of corn, or as the crystal of salt." 

"Every particle that enters into the composition of a muscle, 
a nerve, or a bone, has been placed in its position by molecular 
force." — "We come now to the Soul — " You see I am not minc- 
ing matters, but avowing nakedly what many scientific thinkers 
more or less distinctly believe. The formation of a crystal, a 
plant, or an animal is, in their eyes, A purely mechanical prob- 
lem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in 
the smallness of the masses and the complexity of the problems 
involved. Here you have one half of the dual truth. Let us now 
glance at the other half Associated with this wonderful mech- 
anism of the animal body we have phenomena not less certain 
than those of physics, but between which and the mechanism we 
discern no necessary connection. A man, for example, can say, 
I feel, I think, I love; but how does consciousness infuse itself into 



158 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tile problem ? The human brain is said to be the organ of 
thought and feeling ; when we are hurt, the brain feels it ; when 
we ponder, it is the brain that thinks ; when our passions or affec- 
tions are excited, it is through the instrumentality of the brain." 
Then follows the illustration of spiral motions of the molecules 
of the brain as exponents of the origin of thought, already quoted 
in Chapter IV., p. 103. 

Probably no one entertains a doubt that the brain is concerned 
in all the acts of the Mind, especially in voluntary motion, and 
when the Passions operate. But no one knows better than our 
Author that there is not a single fact to show in what manner 
the brain contributes its instrumentality. The doctrine of molec- 
ular action I shall have sufficiently shown to be a mere assump- 
tion, and the assumed corresponding waste of the organ to be 
absolutely contradicted by facts. Nor has it the least bearing 
upon the question before us, which relates entirely to the 
"why?" or the Cause which brings the brain into action. As 
to the manner in which the brain contributes to the phenomena 
of Mind, or if it be alone the Cause, the way in which it does it is 
utterly unimportant. The whole discussion about " molecular 
action," " spiral motions," &c, is merely designed as a plausible 
pretense for materialism, and none but Materialists undertake 
the question. When the Professor says that— the "why would 
still remain unanswered" (page 103), it is a culmination of his an- 
tecedent reasoning in the absolute doctrine of materialism, and it 
will be ultimately seen that he carries it out to its consistent end. 
But his illustration of Life and Mind is a compact and probably 
the best example of the materialistic ratiocination. As usual, 
however, it is entirely regardless of all the unique phenomena 
of Life and of Mind, and of all the distinguishing characteristics 
of the mineral and organic departments of nature — never, indeed, 
adverting to any one of them as denoting a difference, but as- 
suming the phenomena of simple, inorganic matter as the only 
recognized ground of reasoning — save only the ignorance which 
mistook the Pyramids as the product of the Earth, and which is 
made the basis of an equally unfounded assumption of a coinci- 
dent structure and force between minerals and -living beings, 
enforced by the eclat which has crowned Yon Humboldt's expo- 
sure of the ignorance. 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 159 

The Materialist, well knowing that there is as total a want of 
analogies and resemblances between a crystal and a seed or egg 
as there is between an egg and the Pyramids of Egypt, compares 
the seed and the egg to a crystal, because they are symmetrical in 
form, and built up of particles of matter " by the play of molecu- 
lar force after the manner of crystals," completely ignoring the 
fundamental difference in their elementary composition and all 
the unique variety of structure presented by the organic germs. 
Let us, then, after the manner of Professor Tyndall, plant a seed 
in the earth, and with it deposit the most symmetrical gem ; and 
let us extend his illustration by placing an egg and another gem 
under a hen — the crystal having been neglected in this particular 
by the Professor in his comparative illustration — what result do 
we witness? In the one case, the development of the seed into 
a plant, reproducing similar seeds, in the other an animal bring- 
ing forth similar eggs ; and so on through all the generations 
since the days of Adam, every species of plant and every species 
of animal forever preserving their individuality, and all their 
original, minutest characteristics, and without the vegetable king- 
dom to animate and combine the elements of matter into organic 
compounds the whole animal kingdom would disappear from the 
earth. And what of the planted and incubated costal 7 Even 
less changed than the structure which forms the groundwork of 
our Author's illustration, " the Pyramids of Egypt," some of 
which have been sadly rifled and mutilated by barbarous hands. 
And yet would the doctrine of the " Correlation of Forces " in- 
culcate the belief that living beings are endowed with no other 
properties, governed by no. other forces, than the simple condi- 
tions of matter, and its projectors ridicule, as we have seen, the 
"Vital Principle" as the conception of a shallow imagination. 

There is also apparently no end to the specious parallels which 
are instituted between living beings and the devices of art (more 
of which are yet in prospect before us), that may contribute, along 
with the simple phenomena of inorganic nature, towards their re- 
duction to a common level. And yet is this expedient, which is 
not even a clumsy illustration, of the most mischievous influence, 
as it addresses itself to the popular mind, which is not only in- 
capable of detecting the fallacy, but rather regards it as a demon- 
stration ; while the scientific mind that is conversant with or- 



160 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ganic nature looks on in dismay. Lord Bacon animadverts in 
the following manner upon this disposition to fortify a doubtful 
cause by auxiliary means which have no relationship to it- — "I 
see sometimes," he says, " the profoundest sort of Wits, in hand- 
ling some particular argument, will now and then draw a bucket 
of water out of this well for their present use ; but the spring- 
head thereof seemeth to me not to have been visited." 
Or, according to Gothe (Mephistopheles) — 

"For when ideas have grown scant, 
A ready word supplies the want." 

One more example, from Professor Tyndall, will assist the 
judgment of the reader. Thus, in his work on -"Heat considered 
as a Mode of Motion," Professor Tyndall says — 

"But we can. not stop at Vegetable Life, for this is the source, 
mediate or immediate, of all animal life. In the animal body 
vegetable substances are brought again into contact with their 
beloved oxygen, and they burn within us as a fire burns in a 
grate. This is the source of all animal power, and the Forces in 

PLAY ARE THE SAME IN KIND AS THOSE WHICH OPERATE IN 

INORGANIC nature. In the plant the CLOCK is ivound up, in the 
animal it runs down. But surely as the force which moves a 
clock is derived from the arm which winds up the clock, so surely 
is all terrestrial power derived FROM the Sun." ! ! 

Or, as Liebig has it — " The self-regulating steam-engines fur- 
nish no unapt image of what occurs in the animal body. The 
body, in regard to heat and FORCE, .acts just like one of these ma- 
chines.'' 1 

Buchner, also, in his work on " Force and Matter," brings the 
steam-engine into service, and improves upon Liebig. Thus — 
" The steam-engine is, in a certain sense, endowed with life, and 
produces, as the result of a peculiar combination of force-en- 
dowed materials, a united effect, which we use for our purposes, 
without, however, being able to see, smell, or touch the effect 
itself." 

Many others have the same parallel between man and the 
steam-engine, and it now plays a conspicuous part in the chem- 
ical philosophy of Organic Life and Mind ; and as it is among 
the best of its arguments, or rather is its very best, it has been 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 1G1 

repeated here and elsewhere in quotations from several of its 
ablest expounders, and also to avoid the imputation of any mis- 
apprehension which the nature of the argument might otherwise 
suggest. The device originated with Liebig ; but the principle 
had been fully propounded by others. Thus, Dr. Billing, in 
his "Principles of Medicine" (1838), presents it in the following 
language and typography — 

" We have in the lungs a charcoal fire constantly burn- 
ing, and in the other parts a wood fire, the one producing 
carbonic acid gas, the other carbon, the food supplying, through the 
circulation, the vegetable or animal fuel, from which the charcoal 
is prepared that is burned in the lungs. It is thus that animal 
heat is kept up" — a phenomenon which I have shown extensive- 
ly in the Institutes of Medicine (pp. 234-279), and in the Medical 
and Physiological Commentaries (vol. ii., pp. 1-78), to be wholly 
the result of vital action, analogous to the process of secretion. 

About the time of Billing's work, Dr. Eoget embellished his 
" Briclgewater Treatise on Animal and Vegetable Physiology" 
with the following graphic description of the apparatus, and the 
office which each part fulfills in the generation of animal heat, or 
vital power of the Materialists. Thus — 

" The food supplies the fuel, which is prepared for use by the 
digestive organs, and conveyed by the pulmonary arteries to the 
place where it is to undergo combustion. The diaphragm is the 
bellows which feeds the furnace with air; and the trachea is the 
chimney through which the carbonic acid, which is the product 
of combustion, escapes." 

"We are constantly asked, How we know the existence of the 
Yital Properties or Powers ? Again I say, by precisely the 
same means as the advocates of the chemical and physical doc- 
trines of Life defend their knowledge of the forces which govern 
the inorganic world. The question is important, as implying 
that Physiologists either do not arrive at their knowledge of 
causes through their effects, or that there is nothing different in 
the phenomena of organic and inorganic beings. What would 
the Metaphysician say were we to ask him for any other dem- 
onstration of Mind than its manifestations ; or the mechanical or 
chemical Philosopher, should we demand any other evidence of 
gravitation, magnetism, chemical affinity, &c, than the effects 

11 



162 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which they supply ? And do we not distinguish one from the 
other, and regard them as wholly distinct forces, by the differ- 
ence in their effects ? The proof is clear and demonstrative in 
all the cases. Where the results of power differ so materially 
from each other, it is as good a ground of argument, that the 
phenomena depend upon specific powers or forces in one case as 
in the other; and if it be " a cloak of ignorance" in either case 
to assume the existence of forces, it must surely appertain to him 
who attempts an explanation of the phenomena by assuming 
forces with which such phenomena have no known connection. 

The phenomena which different agents, powers, or causes 
manifest are so unlike each other, that different modes of inves- 
tigation must be pursued to arrive at a knowledge of each ; and 
the phenomena will be just as conclusive of the nature of one 
substance or force as of another. A stone, for instance, affects 
the sight and touch ; it appears of a certain shajpe, size, color, &c, 
or it is hard or soft ; if analyzed, it is found to be composed of 
several distinct substances, each of which manifest other phe- 
nomena ; and this is all we know of the nature of a stone. And 
so of magnetism, electricity, light, heat, and whatever else apper- 
tains to the inorganic world. We examine their manifestations, 
and compare them together, and distinguish different things from 
each other by the manifestations or phenomena of each. But 
there are groups of phenomena which have certain general re- 
semblances, and these we arrange into genera or families, as the 
several earths, metals, gases, &c. ; but the specific distinctions 
always remain, so that by the phenomena peculiar to each spe- 
cies we can always distinguish one from another. Just so in re- 
spect to the physical and chemical forces. The means of knowl- 
edge are of the same nature in all the cases, and the proof is as 
good in one case as in another. 

Coming to plants and animals, a general survey of their phe- 
nomena shows us that they have no other analogies of any im- 
portance with the inorganic world than the elements of which 
they are composed. These are derived from the inorganic king- 
dom ; and here the similitude ends. If we investigate the phe- 
nomena analytically, they come upon us in a profusion immeas- 
urably surpassing those of inorganic beings, and without the 
most remote resemblance. Here, therefore, we apply the same 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OE EORCES. 163 

rule as to inorganic beings ; and by the same process of observa- 
tion, we find in the organic, besides their peculiarities of com- 
position and structure, a great assemblage of functions, all of 
which are distinguished by an endless variety of phenomena 
which have no existence in the inorganic; so that we come to 
learn incomparably more of the force or power of living beings 
than we can of inorganic things, and the proof is of the same na- 
ture in both cases. By the same rule, also, we attain our knowl- 
edge of the Soul, and beyond that of Kevelation, all that is rela- 
tive to the Supreme Being ; and we distinguish each from all the 
others, or bring them into relationship, in the same way. But in 
respect to the Soul, I rest my demonstration upon certain parallel 
effects resulting from the action of physical causes upon the brain, 
and employ the phenomena of Mind abstractedly, as merely aux- 
iliary. 

Having thus far afforded the advocates of the " New Philoso- 
phy" an opportunity of declaring themselves as to the prelimina- 
ry step — the " Correlation or Equivalence of Physical and Vital 
Forces," and a consequent rejection of a Vital Force and Soul, 
let us next advert to some of the great Masters to whom the 
world is indebted for the Science of Medicine. And in the mean 
time I may ask, who, of all the writers now engaged in efforts to 
substitute chemical for Vital Physiology, can hope to survive 
their own generation? Physiology and Medicine have been 
built up upon the foundation of a Vital Principle, and they alone 
who have built upon that foundation — they alone who have car- 
ried the same spirit of inquiry to the investigation of Mind, have 
transmitted their writings to the present century. I might begin 
with Hippocrates, the " Senex Divinus," the founder of the Sci- 
ence, and follow the ages along till we come to their culmination 
in the profound Vitalists of recent times — Baglivi, Haller, Hun- 
ter, Bichat, &c. All these " household gods " of Medical Science 
might be most effectually summoned, with their reasoning pred- 
icated of an observation of Nature, in defense of a specific Vital 
Principle or Force, for the purpose of showing an unanimity of 
opinion that the same philosophy is applicable for proving the 
existence of a Soul as a substantive, self-acting Principle. If the 
premises are good for a Vital Force, so are the corresponding 
facts for a Soul. And this is, evidently enough, the special rea- 



164 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

son why the Materialist bestows so much labor upon the forces of 
matter in disproof of a Principle of Life, and why, in so doing, 
he is careful to avoid the phenomena of living beings as distin- 
guished from those of dead matter. None know better than the 
Materialist that an admission of. this ground of reasoning from 
the unique manifestations of Life to their cause, as practised by 
him in the case of inorganic matter, at once opens a door for the 
same process of reasoning as to a self-acting Soul, and for his 
own expulsion from this new field of ambitious aspirations. 
Hence the importance which I have given to the question of a 
Principle of Life as wholly distinct from the properties of unor- 
ganized matter. 

But there were also those in ages past who devoted their brief 
day to the degradation of living beings to the condition of inor- 
ganic nature, and which leads the illustrious Bichat to say of 
them, that — 

"Physiology would have made much greater progress if all 
those who studied it had set aside the notions which are bor- 
rowed from the accessory sciences, as they are termed. But these 
sciences are not accessory ; they are wholly strangers to Physiolo- 
gy, and should be banished from it wholly? " To say that Phys- 
iology is made up of the physics of animals is to give a very 
absurd idea of it. As well might we say that Astronomy is the 
Physiology of the stars." — General Anatomy, &c. 

And thus the eminent Muller, in his "Physiology," when 
speaking of the " Yital Principle" — 

" This RATIONAL creative force is exerted in every animal strictly 
in accordance with what the nature of each part requires? The fact 
is truly stated ; but it reposes on great laws of organization, not 
upon intelligence. That such is Muller's view appears from an- 
other expression, that — " The formative or organizing Principle is a 
creative power ', modifying matter blindly and unconsciously? Again 
he says — " The only character that can be possibly compared in 
organic and inorganic bodies is the mode in which symmetry is 
realized in each." " Whether the Yital Principle is to be re- 
garded as imponderable matter, or a force or energy, is just as 
uncertain as the same question in reference to several phenome- 
na in physics. Physiology, in this case, is not behind the other 
natural sciences ; for the properties of this Principle in the func- 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 165 

tions of the nerves are nearly as well known as those of light, ca- 
loric, and of electricity, in physics." And again — " Without in 
the remotest degree wishing to compare the Vital and Mental 
Principles with the forces of inorganic matter, we must express 
our conviction that there is nothing in the facts of natural science 
which argues against the possibility of the existence of an Imma- 
terial Principle independent of matter, though its powers be mani- 
fested in organic bodies." 

Even Andral, the restorer of the ancient humoral doctrine of 
disease, remarks that — " Until it is proved that the forces which, 
in a living body, interrupt the play of the natural chemical affin- 
ities, maintain a proper temperature, and preside over the vari- 
ous actions of Organic and Animal Life, are analogous to those 
admitted by natural philosophy, we shall act consistently with the 
principles of that philosophy by giving distinct names to these 
two kinds of forces, and employing ourselves in calculating the 
different laws they obey." — Pathological Anatomy. 

The foregoing doctrines are derived from distinguished writers 
of the present century, and they are examples of opinions enter- 
tained by all who have contributed to the advancement of medi- 
cal science. And even they who are most addicted to the phys- 
ical and chemical views of Life often contradict themselves in 
their waking hours. Thus we have seen that the eminent Chem- 
ist, Baron Liebig-, is one of the most emphatic opponents of the 
doctrine of a Vital Principle or Force, and he carries his chemical 
philosophy to the Soul itself. And yet, when contemplating the 
phenomena of Life outside of the laboratory, he avows opinions 
in direct conflict with his materialistic philosophy ; and as this is 
interesting in showing how utterly baseless and speculative the 
doctrines in materialism are regarded by their projectors, I shall 
quote this Chief of the school rather extensively. Thus, in his 
" Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology," we are told that — 

" Our notion of Life involves something more than mere re- 
production — namely, the idea of an active Power, exercised by 
virtue of a definite form, and production and generation in a 
definite form. The production of organs, the co-operation of a 
system of organs, and their power not only to produce their com- 
ponent parts from the food presented to them, but to generate 
themselves in their original form and with their properties, are 



166 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

characters belonging exclusively to Organic Life, and constitute a form 
of reproduction independent of Chemical Foeces. This 
Yital Peinciple is known to us through the peculiar form of 
its instruments— that is, through the organs in which it resides. 
Its Laws must be investigated just as we investigate those 
of the othee foeces which effect motion and changes in 
Mattee." 

The following is the very first paragraph in our Author's work 
on "Animal Chemistry applied to Physiology and Pathology." 
Thus— 

"In the animal ovum,' as well as in the seed of a plant, we 
recognize a ceetain eemaekaele foece, the souece of 
geowth, or increase in the mass, and of reproduction, or of 
supply of the matter consumed — A foece in a state of eest. 
By the action of external influences, by impregnation, by the 
presence of air and moisture, the condition of static equilib- 
eium of this force is disturbed. Enteeing into a state of 
MOTION OE ACTIVITY, it exhibits itself in the production of a series 
of forms, which, although occasionally bounded by right lines, are 
yet widely distinct from geometrical forms, such as we observe in 
crystallized minerals. This Force is called the Vital Foece, vis 
vitai, or vitality." 

Farther on we learn that — " The Yital Force is manifested in 
form of eesistance, inasmuch as by its presence in the living- 
tissues their elements acquire the power of withstanding the disturb- 
ance and change in their form and composition which external 
agencies tend to produce — a powee which, as chemical com- 
pounds, they do not possess." " The Yital Peinciple must 
be a MOTIVE POWEE, capable of imparting motion to atoms at rest, 
and of opposing eesistance to othee Foeces producing mo- 
tion, such as the Chemical Foece, Heat, and Electeicity." 
"Eveey thing in the organism goes on under the influence of 
the Yital Foece, an immateeial Agent which the Chemist 
can not employ at will." Again he says — ^ 

"In what form or in what manner the Yital Force produces 
mechanical effects in the animal body is altogether unknown, 
and is as little to be ascertained by experiment as the connec- 
tion of chemical action with the phenomena of motion, which we 
can produce witji the galvanic battery. So it if with the Yital 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF EOECES. 167 

Principle and with the phenomena exhibited by living bodies. 
The cause of these Phenomena is not Chemical Force ; it 
is not Electricity or magnetism. It is a peculiar force, be- 
cause it exhibits manifestations which are formed BY NO other 
known forces." "In regard to the nature and essence of 
the Vital Force, we can hardly deceive ourselves when we reflect 
that it behaves, in all its manifestations, exactly like other 
natural forces, and is subject to the action of a Blister." And 
again — 

"The Vital Principle opposes to the continual action of the 
atmospheric moisture and temperature upon the organism, A re- 
sistance which is in a degree invincible.' 1 '' "The Vital Force 
appears as a moving force or cause of motion, when it over- 
comes the Chemical Force, cohesion and affinity, which act 
between the constituents of food, and when it changes the posi- 
tion or place in which the elements occur. The Vital Princi- 
ple is manifested as A cause of motion in overcoming the 
chemical attraction of the constituents of food, and is, farther, 
the cause which compels them to combine in new arrange- 
ments, and to assume new forms." Again — "When a chemical 
compound of simple constitution is introduced into the stomach, 
its chemical action is, of course, opposed by the Vital Prin- 
ciple. The results produced depend upon the strength of their 
respective actions. 11 Again — " The Vital Force in a living ani- 
mal tissue appears as A cause of growth in the mass, and of re- 
sistance to those external agencies which tend to alter the 
form, structure, and composition of the substance of the tissue 
in which the vital energy resides. 11 And as to Plants, our high 
Authority says that — 

" The living part of a plant acquires the whole force and di- 
rection of its vital energy from the absence of all conductors 
of force. By this means the leaf is enabled to overcome the 
strongest chemical attractions, to decompose carbonic ACID, and to 
assimilate the elements of its nourishment." — "The CONSTIT- 
UENTS of vegetable and animal substances are formed under the 
guidance and power of THE Vital PRINCIPLE, which determines the 
direction of their molecular attraction. In the formation of veg- 
etable and animal substances the Vital Principle opposes, as a 
Force of resistance, the action of the other Forces." — " The 



168 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Yital Peinciple alone is capable of restoring the original or- 
der and manner of the molecular arrangement in the small- 
est particles of albumen." — "Vital Power in vegetables accom- 
plishes the transformation OF mineral substances into an or- 
ganism endowed with life." Summarily — 

" If we assume all the phenomena exhibited by the organ- 
ism of plants and animals are to be ascribed to a peculiar 
CAUSE, different in its manifestations from ALL OTHER CAUSES 
which produce motion or change of condition; if, therefore, 
we regard the Yital Principle as an independent Force, then, 
in the phenomena of organic life, as in all other phenomena as- 
cribed to the action of forces, we have the statics— that is, the state 
of equilibrium determined by a resistance, and *the Dynamics 
of the Yital Force." ! ! The Yital Principle dies, as follows — 

" Death is the condition in which all resistance on the part of 
THE Yital Force entirely ceases. So lqng as this condition is not 
established, the living tissues continue to offer resistance." 

The foregoing extracts are derived from Liebig's renowned 
work on "Animal or Organic Chemistry applied to Physiology 
and Pathology," written at the request of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, and which, as the reader 
will have observed, inculcate the extreme doctrines of a Yital 
Principle. But the object of the work was to establish the Chem- 
ical doctrines of Life, in direct opposition to the Vital, and it 
therefore abounds with the most unexampled contradictions in 
fundamental principles, as the Author happened to be reasoning 
from the phenomena of living beings or the phenomena of chem- 
ical manipulations. Nevertheless, the powerful Materialistic 
School seized upon his physical and chemical doctrines in total 
neglect of the counter-poison by which they are accompanied, 
and have laid them at the foundation of the "New Philosophy." 
But as it is the most remarkable instance that can be adduced in 
which a writer, whatever his subject, so contradicts himself, it 
will be sufficiently obvious to the reader that Materialism has 
made a blunder in taking his chemical dogmas as its guide. I 
have already presented examples of our Author's chemical phi- 
losophy of Life ; but that the reader may have immediately be- 
fore him the remarkable contrast, I will now quote the following 
statement, in which the two conflicting doctrines are mixed up 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 1G9 

together, and a foundation laid for the creation of living beings in 
the laboratory. Thus — 

"By Chemical Agency we can produce the constituents 
of muscular fibre, skin, and hair." ! ! " We are able to form, in 
our laboratories, formic acid and urea, &c. — all products, it is 
said, of the Yital Principle. We see, therefore, that this mys- 
terious Vital Principle can be replaced by the Chemical 
.Forces."! ! — Organic Chemistry, &c. 

It will be also interesting to learn our Author's chemical doc- 
trine of Death as opposed to the foregoing vital one; from which 
it will be seen that, in this acceptation, we die by breathing. Thus 
he says — a The true cause of death is the respiratory 
process [!] — that is, the chemical action of the atmosphere." — 
Animal Chemistry, &c. 

I may now finally add, from Liebig's "Chemical Letters," a re- 
buke of the Vitalists which recoils with great force upon himself. 
Thus— 

"Therefore ignorant Physicians present us with impossible 
theories, and furnish themselves, in the word Yital Power, 
with a wonderful thing, by which they explain all those phenom- 
ena which they do not understand. With a certain inconceiva- 
ble, indefinite something, every thing may be explained that is 
incomprehensible." 

Buchner, in his work on "Force and Matter," has the sagaci- 
ty to see that the Materialists, in adopting Liebig as their Lead- 
er, have taken in hand "a weapon that cuts both waj's;" and 
among his lively assaults upon the Baron's advocacy of a Yital 
Principle, he is disposed to consider him, as it respects that sub- 
ject — "A mere Amateur and Promenader." — Preface to 4th Ed. 
It is the same, however, with all who attempt to apply the doc- 
trines of Chemistry to the problems of Organic Life. They are, 
in this field of Science, " mere amateurs and promenaders." The 
moment they approach the subject they summon to their aid 
either a Yital Principle, or transmute caloric into its equivalent, 
and call it a "Yital Force." There is not, indeed, in the whole 
range of medical literature, one author, however devoted to the 
physical and chemical views of Life, who does not evince the ne- 
cessity of admitting a governing Yital Principle as a distinct en- 
tity, distinct from all other things in nature. I say, there can not 



170 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

be produced one author of any consideration in medicine, and 
scarcely one in Chemistry, who does not summon to the aid of 
his discussion a Yital Principle whenever he touches upon the 
abstract phenomena of Life. And equally so in respect to the 
Mind. They must have, and they know it, a special Force for 
the Organic mechanism, and a special Principle for the phenome- 
na of Mind. Nevertheless, no regard is shown by them, in their 
pursuit of the materialistic l^potheses, to those special manifestar 
tions of Life and Mind which distinguish them so totally from 
the conditions of lifeless matter; and I shall now present the 
reader with an example in which this is avowed, from the 
" Chemistry of Animal and Vegetable Physiology " by the emi- 
nent Mulder, of the University of Utrecht, in which he con- 
cedes the whole principle of " ascending from the phenomena to 
their causes." And yet, in his devotion to Chemistry, he is ap- 
parently unconscious that living beings are distinguished from 
dead matter by any peculiar manifestations, or is indisposed to 
"ascend from an unprejudiced consideration of their phenome- 
na." Thus our Author — 

"Wherever forces are found in organic nature, there are sub- 
stances which are all supplied with molecular chemical forces. No 
general, no Yital Force, should be assumed as the^ source of 
those molecular forces. Such a Vital Force is irreconcilable 
with the true principles of Science, which require that nothing 
should be assumed as existing, but that every thing should be 
sought for in nature; which teach us to ascend only from an un- 
prejudiced consideration of the phenomena to their causes, and to as- 
sign those causes only as we deduce them from the observed phenom- 
ena." And yet within a few pages of the foregoing quotation, 
after the manner of all other chemical physiologists, he contra- 
dicts himself, as follows: 

" Every thing which ceases to be subject to the Vital Prin- 
ciple becomes incapable of being stimulated by the Vital 
Forces ; — it is placed in other circumstances ; and, as the prod- 
ucts of the Vital Functions are different from the products of in- 
organic nature, in consequence of the very difference of the cir- 
cumstances in which the elements are placed, so the products of 
substances deprived of vital influence must also greatly 
vary with circumstances" — which is a sound vital doctrine. 



CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES. 171 

And here is another Chemist of distinguished ability, Dr. 
Prout, who had the philosophical acumen to place phenomena 
and their causes in their proper relation. Thus,- in his "Bridgewa- 
ter Treatise on Chemistry and Digestion" (1834), he remarks that — 

" With the living, the animative properties of organic bodies, 
Chemistry has not the smallest alliance, and probably will never, IN 
ANY DEGREE, elucidate those properties. The phenomena of Life are 
not even remotely analogous to any thing we know in chem- 
istry as exhibited among inorganic agents." " The MEANS by which 
the peculiarities of composition and structure are produced, which 
is so remarkable in all organic substances, like the results them- 
selves, are quite peculiar, and bear little or no resemblance to 
any artificial process of Chemistry. 1 ' 1 " Those who have attempted 
to apply Chemistry to Physiology and Pathology have split on 
A fatal rock by hastily assuming that what they found by ex- 
periment to be wanting, or otherwise changed, in the animal 
economy, was the cause of particular diseases, and that such dis- 
eases were to be cured by supplying, and adjusting artificially, 
the principle in error. But the scientific Physician will soon 
discover that Nature will not allow the Chemist to officiate as 
her journeyman, even in the most trifling degree." 

And to the same effect may be quoted Dr. Carpenter, one 
of the foremost, as we have seen, in the Physiological School of 
pure Chemistry — 

" The agency of Vitality," says this reasoner, in his " Compar- 
ative Physiology," where he generally ridicules the term and all 
that is relative to it — " the agency of Vitality, as Dr. Prout 
justly remarks, does not change the properties of the elements, 
but simply combines the elements in modes which we can not 
imitate." ! ! {Vide p. 144.) 

Such admissions as we have now seen, coming from the most 
able of the chemical school of Physiology, are important in con- 
nection with its efforts to identify the forces of organic and inor- 
ganic nature. But the facts and the laws which they underlie 
must determine the merits of the subject ; although it will be im- 
possible in a work like this to afford the reader more than a gen- 
eral apprehension of the vast amount of facts which may be sum- 
moned to the refutation of the foregoing doctrine of the " Corre- 
lation or Unity of the Physical and Vital Forces." This, how- 



172 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ever, I shall continue to provide in the progress of the work. 
I may say, also, that, besides what I have presented specifically 
upon the subject in the Institutes of Medicine, there is in that 
work an array of facts and arguments against the assumed iden- 
tity of the Yital Force and those of physics and chemistry, or 
their conversion into each other, throughout the discussion on 
Animal Heat, in all upon the Composition and Structure of liv- 
ing beings, all upon the Properties of Life, all upon the Nervous 
Power and Laws of the Nervous System, all upon Organic and 
Animal Functions, all upon the principles relative to Pathology 
and Therapeutics, all upon the Modus Operandi of Eemedies ; 
and, in brief, the whole work, of more than one thousand octavo 
pages, is a demonstration against the doctrine, although not of 
the same direct nature as has now been submitted to the reader. 
Equally, also, do all the facts and arguments concur together in 
proving, inferentially, that Mind is as distinct from all the forces 
of nature as they are from the Creator ; anal thus I bring the 
whole into co-operation with the present more specific demon- 
stration in substantiating the existence of the Soul as a substan- 
tive self-acting Agent In a notice of the " Institutes of Medicine" 
in the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Eeview, July, 1869, 
it is said that — 

"Dr. Paine puts himself in opposition to men whom we are 
accustomed to consider the first of the day, to say nothing of 
such humble individuals as ourselves. We need hardly state 
after this that Dr. Paine is strenuously opposed to what we are 
accustomed to consider the grandest generalization of modern times — 
the Correlation of Forces, the Conservation of Energy. Still, the 
perusal of such a book as that written by Dr. Paine is not with- 
out its advantages ; it shows, at least, that there are two sides to a 
question; and no one can deny the ability and the energy with 
which Dr. Paine maintains his position." (The italics, as usual, 
are mine.) 

While I am much obliged to the Eeviewer for his candor, I 
have made the foregoing extract particularly for the purpose of 
enabling the reader to comprehend fully the prevalence of the 
doctrine under consideration, and the support it has derived from 
the Scientific World; and I may therefore desist from farther 
citations from authors who have treated upon the subject. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. —DARWINISM, ETC. 173 



CHAPTEE VII 

OTHER AND MORE DIRECT FACTS AND ARGUMENTS IN MATERI- 
ALISM, AND OTHER RELATIVE GROUNDS CONSIDERED. — OR- 
GANIC LIFE. — CREATION. — SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. — DAR- 
WINISM, ETC. 

I heartily agree with Sir John Herschell, that — 

"Nothing can be more unfounded than the objection which 
has been taken, in limine, bj persons well-meaning, perhaps, cer- 
tainly narrow-minded, against the study of Natural Philosophy, 
and, indeed, against all science, that it fosters in its cultivators an 
undue and overweening self-conceit, leads them to doubt the im- 
mortality of the Soul, and to scoff at Eevealed Eeligion." — Dis- 
course on Natural Philosophy. 

I shall have sufficiently indicated the true origin of the preju- 
dice in the foregoing paragraph. Perhaps, indeed, the illustrious 
Astronomer whom I have just quoted may have unconsciously 
contributed his mite towards the result in denominating " the 
first appearance of Organic Life on our globe that mystery of 
mysteries" — a sentiment which is quoted in Mantel's Wonders 
of Geology, and by other geologists, with no little complacency. 
It is not " Natural Philosophy," or " Science/' per se, which forms 
the ground of objection to "the study of natural philosophy," but 
a false interpretation of Natyire. It is this which has adulterated 
our faithfand incurred rebuke ; and I shall have presented many 
startling examples where this obliquity of vision has more or less 
justified the prejudice in unreflecting minds. 

On the contrary, it is the natural tendency of all true philos- 
ophy, of every intellectual improvement, of every species of 
knowledge, to enlarge our conceptions of the Deity, and to warm 
our gratitude and piety. It is, indeed, a principal object of my 
present undertaking, in its connections with the Soul, to show 
that philosophy and science may be brought powerfully to the 
protection and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, and may be 



174 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

made to prostrate those errors which are arrayed in opposition. 
It is also for the preservation of that philosophy which our oppo- 
nents so justly glorify that I have again appeared as its humble 
defender. But I insist that it is in no respect my object to speak 
of persons or motives, but of the doctrines which they inculcate. 
If they are imbued with error, I shall not hesitate to render it 
manifest, and in language corresponding with its nature; nor 
will it be objected that, to be properly intelligible, things should 
be called by their right names. As to epithets, they are nothing 
unless they flow naturally from the premises. An Author may 
reject the Mosaic Narratives in good faith, and yet maintain his 
general confidence in Eevelation ; he may deny the existence of 
the Soul for reasons entirely satisfactory to himself; he may 
gravely imagine that organic beings originated in the forces of 
inorganic nature, or in some primordial form of organic matter ; 
and he may think that he has a right to inflict those opinions 
upon a credulous world. But this in no wise exempts him from 
a criticism that may expose the errors of his doctrines and their 
tendency to unsettle all Keligion in the masses of society. What- 
ever, however, may be the critic's judgment, his Author is cer- 
tain of a full measure of justice from the unprejudiced public to 
whom the appeal is made. I will also repeat that, wherever 
words which occur in the quotations are placed in capitals or 
italics, and apparently operate to my advantage, it is my desire 
that the emphasis should be regarded as mine. In a large propor- 
tion of cases it is made by myself, to engage the reader's attention. 

Having gone over the ground of the " New Philosophy," des- 
ignated as the " Correlation, or Equivalence, or Metamorphosis, 
and Conservation of Forces," and th$ manner in which it is ap- 
plied to the interpretation of Life and of Mind, I shall now enter 
more fully upon a* consideration of the details of the materialistic 
doctrine. In the fulfillment of this purpose I shall continue to 
afford materialism every possible advantage, so far, at least, as a 
citation of the highest authorities in its behalf can be arrayed in 
opposition to my facts and arguments. There can be no evasion 
of the questions before us, and the force against which I contend 
should be fully presented to the reader. 

The only novelty, however, of the " New Philosophy " consists 
in the application of the doctrine of the " Correlation or Equiva- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DAKWINISM, ETC. 175 

lence and Conservation of Forces." To Buffon is due the mer- 
it of having' projected the essential features of the present doc- 
trine of the spontaneity of living beings, whether they begin 
with the elements of matter, or "protoplasm," or a "cell," or any 
other " primordial form." Buffon is quoted by Howard, in his 
"History of Mankind" (1797), as saying that— 

"All organized nature, plants, all animals, and man, owe their 
primary existence to an infinity of living organic atoms, or mol- 
ecules, everywhere floating, and to certain inferior forms, or 
matrixes {monies interieures), ready to receive and adopt them. If 
these produce not new organized beings, it is because there is 
already a sufficient number of existing beings to receive and ab- 
sorb them. All production, all generation, all development and 
growth suppose the concourse and reunion of a great quantity 
of these organical atoms. They animate all organized bodies, and 
are successively employed for the nourishment and generation 
of all beings. Should a great part of these beings be suddenly 
suppressed, we should see new species appear, because these organ- 
ical atoms, indestructible and ever active, would in that case re- 
unite to compose other organized bodies ; but when entirely ab- 
sorbed by the inferior forms of already existing beings, no new 
species can be formed, at least in the first great classes of nature." — 
Howard then adds — " In the formation of man, doubtless not to 
shock too violently vulgar prejudices, Buffon allows a 
particular interference of the Divinity, who imparted to him that 
intelligent spirit which renders him so superior to other animals. 
He insinuates, however, that, from analogy, this might be dispensed 
toith, and that with respect to his body the common law of animal 
development iv as followed. 11 

Those disciples of nature who do not begin with the elements 
of matter, but with protoplasm, or a cell, or other primordial 
forms, have neglected Buffon's provision as to the origin of those 
more advanced rudiments, and either assume their eternal exist- 
ence, as taught by Spencer, or candidly avow their ignorance of 
the manner in which they get into being. Of the latter class are 
Darwin, and the late eminent Professor Tiedemann, who, in his 
very able work on the " Physiology of Man," has laid the sub- 
stratum, as it were, of the Darwinian hypothesis, and, of course, 
of materialism also. Thus — 



176 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

" The most probable hypothesis is, that the substance of organ- 
ic bodies existed primitively in water, as a matter of particular 
kind, and that it was there endoived with the plastic faculty — that is 
to say, with the power of acquiring by degrees different simple 
forms of living bodies, with the concurrence of the general influ- 
ences of light, heat, and perhaps, also, of electricity, &c, and of 
then passing from the simple forms to others more complicated; vary- 
ing in proportion to the modification occurring in the external 
influences, until the point when each species acquired duration 
by the production and manifestation of activity of the generative 
system." — "Although we can not here answer the question, 
whence came the water and the organic matter which it contained, 
yet this hypothesis is the one which accords best with the facts 
ivith which geology has lately been enriched." And again he reiter- 
ates — " If it be asked, ivhence organic matters proceed, how they are 
produced, together with the power of formation inherent in them, 
we are necessitated candidly to confess our ignorance on the sub- 
ject, inasmuch as the first origin of organic matters and living 
bodies is altogether beyond the range of experiment? 

And now I ask, Does not the Organic Chemist attempt or pro- 
fess to create organic compounds ? So says Liebig, and so say 
most other distinguished Chemists. Liebig and his disciples cre- 
ate the compounds; Crosse and his followers create the animal. 
Others do but make the attempt ; and this is a very numerous 
class who thus enter into competition with the Original Au- 
thor of organic compounds. What, therefore, is the difference in 
principle between him who pretends to have succeeded in this 
work of creation, and the other who has attempted the work, but 
without success? 

The foregoing doctrine, or its equivalent, is vigorously sus- 
tained by many of the leading scientific minds in Europe, where 
it is advocated by such philosophers as Louis Buchner, Carl 
Yogt, Eudolf Yirchow, Jacob Moleschott, in Germany, and in 
England by such eminent writers as Herbert Spencer, T. H. 
Huxley, Joseph D. Hooker, John Tyndall, William B. Carpen- 
ter, Henry Maudsley, &c. It is also now making its appearance 
in these United States as an attractive subject for popular lec- 
tures. 

My attention will be mostly given to the present representa- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 177 

tive Minds of Great Britain, to which Nation we are indebted for 
a stupendous amount of the soundest philosophy and knowledge 
in the past generations. Whom now do we see there but the lead- 
ing Members of the British Scientific Association, and others not 
less distinguished in the walks of Science, arrayed in a solid 
Phalanx against the existence of the Soul, and therefore, of ne- 
cessity, against man's immortality. This may not be distinctly 
avowed, but we shall see that it is so inferential^ ; for I shall 
quote several writers freely, as I concur entirely with the Editor 
of the Yale College edition of Professor Huxley's Lecture on the 
" Physical Basis of Life," that the new doctrines should " have a 
candid hearing " — whatever may be our motives. The Eastern 
horizon is dark with clouds of the most portentous omen. 
The New York Daily Tribune, of Oct. 22, 1869, in an able and 
liberal Eeview of the Kev. Dr. J. P. Thompson's " Man in Gene- 
sis and Geology," thus sounds the alarm — 

" When at length the tremendous current of skepticism and 
atheism reaches us from England — as it is sure to do in a few 
years — our religious guides will be utterly unfitted to meet it, 
and we shall repeat the desolate experience of modern Germany 
in the matter of Faith and Science." 

And thus the New York Evening Post (March, 1868), in an 
able summary of Buchner's work on "Force and Matter" — 
"Suffice it to say that the necessary tendency of these principles 
is to uproot every thing that is established. They recognize no 
right among men but the right of the strongest; no law but the 
law of passion and impulse. If such views became general, the 
Church and all its observances would first disappear. Parental 
authority and the marriage relation must soon follow. And how 
long could civil order, or, indeed, any tolerable form of human 
society, remain ?" 

It is an auspicious omen that our ablest Dailies are arrayed 
against the efforts that are everywhere made to render the doc- 
trines of materialism and infidelity "accessible to the people at 
large." These missives, thus freighted, and bearing the editorial 
stamp of a disinterested interposition in behalf of the popular 
mind, are of the most incalculable importance to morality and 
religion, as they are the only medium of reaching the general 
community. 

12 



178 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Per contra — which must have escaped the Post — for notwith- 
standing the severity of Biichner's critics in Germany, he ex- 
pressly declares, in the work reviewed by the Post, that — " Since 
the general results of Philosophy and of the Natural Sciences 
have become accessible to the people at large, the greatest dangers to 
society have been apprehended from their materialistic tenden- 
cies. They have even predicted the downfall of Society, and a 
helium omnium contra omnes, if such tendencies should become 
prevalent. Only complete ignorance of the springs of Society could 
fear such a catastrophe." 

Biichner is intolerant of opposition. Among his annoyances 
he brings forward, in great indignation, the eminent Professor 
Eudolph Wagner, as exclaiming, at a meeting of German phy- 
sicians at Gottingen, that — " The morality which flows from sci- 
entific materialism may be comprehended within these few words 
— 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' All noble 
thoughts are but vain dreams, the effusions of automata with 
two arms, running about on two legs, which, being finally de- 
composed into chemical atoms, combine themselves anew, resem- 
bling the dance of lunatics in a mad-house." 

However ludicrous the portrait, it is admirable, nevertheless. 
If it appear like a caricature, it is drawn in exact conformity 
with the teachings of the " New Philosophy." Nay, more — it is 
vastly more to the truth than the complainant's comparison of 
man to a "steam-engine;" for, as will be seen in the sequel, 
Biichner affirms that the engine has even about as much of a 
"heart," and of "life," as a human being, and, in conformity also 
with the "New Philosophy," that the latter is moved by no oth- 
er force, vital or intellectual, than the engine itself; which must 
be allowed to be quite as ludicrous as Wagner's personification 
of the doctrines of the so-called " modern science." 

Dr. Carpenter, whose application of the " Correlation or Met- 
amorphosis of Forces " has been already before us, tells us, among 
other similar expounders of Life, how Tiedemann's organic mat- 
ter and Darwin's primordial form came into existence; being 
essentially the doctrine propounded by Buffon more than a cen- 
tury ago (p. 175). In the first place, after advocating the exist- 
ence of vital properties in the elements of matter, and saying that 
— "No one can ASSERT that there does not exist in every uncombined 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 179 

particle of matter which is capable of being assimilated the ability 
to exhibit vital actions, when placed in the requisite conditions," 
he remarks that— "There is no reasonable ground for doubt that, 
if the elements could be brought together in their requisite states 
and proportions by the hand of man, the result (artificial organic 
compound) would be the same as the natural compound." Again 
— ' 'That the germs (of parasitic plants and animals in the interior of 
others) have been conveyed from without intp the situations where 
they are developed, must be held as a very forced supposition" ! ! 
And again he says — "Eeason has been already given for the 
belief that the affinities which hold together the elementary par- 
ticles of organized structures are not different from those con- 
cerned in the inorganic world ; and it has been shown that the 
tendency to decomposition 1 after death bears a very close 

RELATION WITH THE ACTIVITY OF THE CHANGES WHICH TAKE 

place in the part during life ;" and then, near to the same page, 
contradicts himself, as follows : 

" Organization and vital properties are simultaneously commu- 
nicated to the germ by the structures of its parent. Those vi- 
tal properties confer upon it the means of itself assimilating, 

and THEREBY ORGANIZING AND ENDOWING WITH VITALITY, the 
materials supplied by the inorganic world." — Principles of General 
and Comparative Physiology. 

The eminent Professor Mulder belongs to the School that ad- 
vocates the doctrine just quoted from Dr. Carpenter, affirming 
that — "Organic substances possess properties of a peculiar kind, 
existing in the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, 
of which they are all constituted," and that " upon these princi- 
ples no reason is left for the dispute about equivocal generation or 
spontaneity of being." Indeed, like Drs. Carpenter, Pritchard, &c, 
before the advent of the doctrine of " Correlation or Equivalence 
of Forces," Mulder promulgated, in his " Chemistry of Animal 
and Vegetable Physiology," the whole materialistic hypothesis 
as it reposes upon the doctrine of "Correlation of Forces;" nor 
has it undergone any modifications in principle at the hands 
of any of those who have endeavored to fortify it by a more 
formal exposition of the Equivalence of Forces. 

The foregoing are only introductory examples of the ground- 
work of the discussion which lies before us; as it will be seen 



180 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that they who reject a Yital Force generally refer the origin of 
living beings to a conjoint action of the chemical, and physical 
forces in aggregating the elements of matter into organic, com- 
pounds. The doctrine necessarily is, and is so avowed, not only 
thoroughly materialistic as to Life and the Soul, but rejects also 
Creative Power; which is practically shown by Crosse and his 
followers, who profess to create animals by the action of electrici- 
ty upon simple mineral substances, as exemplified by the Acarus 
Crossii, and of which the Author of the celebrated work on the 
" Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" remarks that — 

" On the hypothesis here brought forward, the Acarus 
Crossii [!] was a type of being ordained from the beginning, 
and destined to be realized under certain physical conditions. 
When a human hand brought these conditions into the proper 
arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which 
we execute every day, and which are followed by natural re- 
sults, but it did nothing more." " The utmost that can be claimed 
for or imputed to Crosse is, that he arranged the natural condi- 
tions under which the true creative energy, that of the Divine 
Author of all things, was pleased to work in this instance." 

Here we have an exemplification of a strictly atheistical expe- 
dient, in the attempt to assign the existence of organic beings to 
the merest chance, under the pretext of ascribing to that chance 
the intrinsic attributes of a Creative Power, and the imposing 
title of the " Divine Author of all things." ! ! It is the same with 
each and all who allow a God, a Creator, &c, yet reject entirely 
His Eevelation as to Creation, supported as it is by the. most 
consummate and endless designs — besides some other demonstra- 
tive facts which will appear in the sequel. It is the old expe- 
dient of the wolf in the disguise of the sheep. The Author was 
a pioneer in the " New Philosophy;" and although boldly ex- 
plicit, he had the public pulse to feel. He suppressed his name, 
and scattered his weapons in ambush. He enters extensively 
upon the origin of living beings, but it simply amounts to the 
assumption that it is an established fact, that by a law of nature 
the elements of matter organized themselves into animated be- 
ings. ISTo work of this character has had a greater popularity. 
It was eminently calculated by its startling assumptions, and be- 
ing of a popular design, to delight the imagination and under- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 181 

mine the biblical faith of multitudes. This was easily foreseen ; 
and as it struck at the foundation of Physiology as well as Re- 
ligion, and as its unphilosophical and mischievous doctrines were 
urged upon us even by the most responsible medical writers, it 
engaged my attention at the time of writing the first edition of 
the Institutes of Medicine (1847), from which I shall now make a 
few extracts. I have there said that — " The Vestiges of the Natural 
History of Creation is powerfully sustained by able articles in the 
British and Foreign Medical Review for January, 1845, 
consisting of twenty-six pages of eulogistic remarks ; and in the 
Medico-Chirurgical Review for the same month, of ten pages 
not less congratulatory — both of London. The work was pub- 
lished in 1844; and, although not at all relevant to medicine, it 
was taken up with avidity by those two leading medical journals 
of Europe, and an effort made to prepossess the medical profes- 
sion before the work itself should fall under their observation ; 
adopting in this respect the system which was almost universally 
pursued by the periodical press, professional and unprofessional, 
even in anticipation of Liebig's work on Animal Chemistry ap- 
plied to Physiology, &c." 

I then proceeded to say that — "It is now my purpose to quote 
the foregoing Reviews in connection with the * Vestiges of Cre- 
ation,' partly to supply other examples in justification of what I 
have said in behalf of the Profession, and of the tendency of the 
chemical and physical hypotheses of life and disease to lay the 
foundation of a grosser materialism, and of infidelity in Religion. 
It seems peculiarly appropriate that Reviewers, who wield an ex- 
tensive and powerful sway, and whose occupation it is to defame 
whatever molests that domain, should be used for the contem- 
plated purpose, and this more especially, as both Reviewers offer 
defiance to the 'Saints,' and the ' timid Religionists.' The Re- 
views are conducted with great diligence and research. Their 
influence is coextensive with medicine. That influence must be 
sapped by a display of its tendencies. There can be no diffi- 
culty with a defense of the right. The inculpated are able, their 
means ample, their coadjutors numerous and powerful, the pub- 
lic generous, and, as I said on a like occasion in the Medical and 
Physiological Commentaries, ' I am single-handed, and have noth- 
ing but facts for my weapons.' 



182 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

4 

" There can be no place more appropriate for looking ' through 
Nature up to Nature's God ' than in the general survey of or- 
ganic beings. If ordained in their organization and their laws 
by a higher Power, that organization and those laws may be well 
urged in proof of their Origin. Then, too, shall the minister of 
health realize the importance of the Institutes of Medicine, and 
the Hippocratic maxim, that 'a philosophical physician is like 
a god.' 

"I shall quote a passage of general import from each of the 
foregoing Eeviews, that no doubt may linger upon the mind of 
any reader as to the justice of the criticism which I have now 
exercised in behalf of religion, morality, and the dignity of med- 
icine. The emphasis is mine. And first the elder brother ; be- 
ginning thus — 

" ' This is a remarkable volume, small in compass, but embrac- 
ing a wide range of inquiry, from worlds beyond the visible starry 
firmament, to the minutest structures of man and animals. No 
name is prefixed — perhaps in order to avoid the snarls of the nar- 
row-minded and bigoted Saints of the present day,' &c. 

" The middle, thus — ' For how many millions and millions of 
years this production and reproduction of animals went on before 
man made his appearance on the scene, no human being will 
ever know. [!] In all probability, countless ages must have 
elapsed before this masterpiece of creation appeared. Our Au- 
thor's speculations on the how, the why, the when, and the 
wherefore this great event occurred, will not give satisfaction 
to the present race of mankind. [!] His hypothesis is three or 
four centuries in advance of the times, and will, be stigmatized by 
the modern Saints as downright atheism, 1 &c. 

u And the end, thus — * We have dedicated a space to this re- 
markable work that may induce many of our readers to peruse 
the original. The Author is decidedly a man of great informa- 
tion and reflection. He will have a host of Saints in array 
against him, and many will join in the cry from hypocrisy and 
self-interest. As we said before, his doctrines have come out 
a century before their time.' " — Medico-Chirurgical Review, 
London, January, 1846. 

. " Next, Dr. Forbes (afterwards Sir John), in the British and 
Foreign Medical Review — 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 183 

" ' This is a very beautiful and a very interesting book. Its theme 
is one of the grandest that can occupy human thought — no less 
than the Creation of the Universe.' 'We are also influ- 
enced by the abstract desire to place before our readers matter 
for their contemplation which can not fail at once to elevate, to 
gratify, and to enrich the mind. It has always been one of the 
boasts of our noble profession that it touches and blends with 
every science; and we should be sorry that our humble efforts 
should at any time be wanting to stimulate its professors to ex- 
ertions that might still justify the boast.' ! ! 

" Of Laplace's nebular hypothesis he says — ' So far from admit- 
ting the atheistical tendency which timid Religionists have at- 
tributed to the nebular hypothesis, we consider it the grandest contri- 
bution which Science has yet made to Religion,'' &c. 

" The reader, therefore, will have no difficulty in understand- 
ing the 'conventional' nature of certain phrases in the following 
remarks by Dr. Forbes : 

" ' That the Creator formed man out of the dust of the earth, we 
have Scriptural authority for believing, and we must confess our 
own predilection for the idea that, at a period however remotely 
antecedent, the Creator endowed certain forms of inorganic mat- 
ter with the PROPERTIES REQUISITE TO ENABLE THEM TO COM- 
BINE, AT A FITTING SEASON, INTO THE HUMAN ORGANISM, Over 

that which would lead us to regard the great-grandfather of our 
common progenitor as a chimpanzee or an orang-outang.' 

" The Vestiges of Creation is then quoted by the Review, as fol- 
lows : ' We have seen powerful evidence that the construction 
of this globe and its associates, and, inferentially, that of all other 
globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal 
exertion of the Deity, but of Natural laws which are expres- 
sions of His will. What is to hinder our supposing that the Or- 
ganic Creation is also a result of Natural laws which are, 
in like manner, an expression of His Will V 

" Upon the foregoing extract from the Vestiges, which is a part 
of a more extended one of the same nature, the Review remarks 
that— 

" ' The COMPLETE ACCORDANCE OF THESE VIEWS with those 

some time ago propounded by ourselves (vol. v., p. 342), 
must be evident, we think, to our readers. To the objection 



184 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which some timid Eeligionists may urge against them, that 
they are inconsistent with the Mosaic Eecord, we simply reply 
with our Author, that we do not think it right to adduce that 
Eecord, either in support of, or in objection to, any scientific 
hypothesis based upon the phenomena of nature.' " — British and 
Foreign Medical Eeview, London, January, 1846. 

" Dr. Forbes assumes, of course, that all the misapprehensions 
and perversions of 'the phenomena of nature' are paramount to 
any thing declared in the Mosaic Eecord." 

Let us now proceed to other authorities upon the question be- 
fore us. Professor Liebig, in his work on "Animal Chemistry 
applied to Physiology and Pathology," which has served so ex- 
tensively as a foundation for the "New Materialism," states the 
doctrine in the following summary manner: 

"Physiology has sufficiently decisive grounds for the opinion, 
that every thought, every sensation, is accompanied by a change 
in the composition of the substance of the brain; that every motion, 
every manifestation of force, is the result of a transformation 
of the structure or of its substance." " Thought, sensation," 
&c, are " manifestations of force," and are, therefore, "the result 
of," &c. 

If, then, the phenomena of Mind be the "result of a transfor- 
mation of the structure or of the substance " of the brain, then 
is the brain the sole cause of the phenomena; while the true Psy- 
chologist maintains that the^Soul is the efficient cause, acting in 
some unknown manner through or upon its co-operating organ, 
the brain. 

Few Chemists have appeared who are as able and distinguished 
as Professor Lehmann, and his opinion on the questions before 
us may not be withheld. In his erudite work on " Physiologic- 
al Chemistry," he has the following remarks : 

"We have not hesitated to avow that we have assumed a thor- 
oughly radical point of view in reference to specific Yital phe- 
nomena and Yital Forces; for we can not rest satisfied with the 
mysterious obscurity in which they have been artificially envel- 
oped." 

Our Author then proceeds to designate the Science of Life as 
a system of metaphysicology, and to confound Physiologists with 
the " advocates of a romantic poetry of nature;" though it is true 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 185 

he had the encouraging success of Liebig before him. Thus our 
Author — 

" It would be well if these spiritualists would look down from 
the high stand they have chosen, and deign to believe that there 
are some among those experimentalists who, clinging to matter, 
and gathering their facts with ant-like industry from the lowly 
earth, notwithstanding that they have long held communion 
with the poet-philosopher, Plato, and the philosophical natural 
inquirer, Aristotle, and have some familiarity with the Peri- 
phrases of Hegel and Schelling, are yet unwilling to relinquish 
their less elevated position. If these happy admirers of their 
own Ideal had descended from their airy heights, and closely 
examined organic and inorganic matter, they would not have 
deemed it necessary to assume that, besides carbon, hydrogen, ni- 
trogen, and oxygen, organic substances must also contain an or- 
ganigenium or latent vital force, or whatever else they may please 
to call it. Had they sought information from a Chemist [!], 
they w<jiuld have learned that, when exposed to the clear light 
of rigid logic, there is no essential difference between 
organic and inorganic bodies. A Chemist totally unac- 
quainted with organic matter would, a priori, have deduced all 
these incidental differences of matter from the doctrine of affinity 
and the science of Stoichiometry, evolved from dead matter. 
However these Advocates of a romantic poetry of nature may 
despise the swarm of industrious investigators, who are often un- 
weariedly occupied for years together in endeavoring to collect a 
few firm supports for the great edifice of a true philosophy of 
nature, we do not despair of seeing our work rise in simple 
grandeur, more durable and lasting than these sophisms of nat- 
ural philosophy, which, passing through ages, from Pythagoras 
and Empidocles to Schelling and Hegel, have, like the sand of 
the ocean shore, been alternately upborne by one wave and in- 
gulfed by the next." 

That the foregoing is not a hasty rhapsody appears from a 
note, in which our Author states that he had " expressed similar 
ideas in an Article which appeared in the Gegenwart? At an- 
other time, also, he caricatures the doctrine of a Yital Force as 
" a belief in supernatural forces of matter." And yet this able 
man, who has studied organic nature in the Chemical Laboratory 



186 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

alone, has the candor to admit that very little dependence can be 
placed upon Organic Chemistry, or its promulgations in respect to 
living beings. 

The doctrine of the existence of vital properties in the elements 
of matter, and their organizing faculty, of which I have recently 
spoken, and which was lately only conjectural, is now becoming 
an important element not only in materialism, but in the sponta- 
neity of living beings. It is thus applied, for example, by Her- 
bert Spencer in the First Part of his "Psychology" (1869), 
where, also, he assimilates inorganic and organic nature, in the 
following manner : 

" The separation between Biology and Geology once seemed 
impossible, and to many seems so now. But every day brings 
new reasons for believing that the one group of phenomena has 
grown out of the other. Organisms of highly differentiated portions 
of the matter forming the Earth's crust, and its gaseous envelope, 
and their differentiation from the rest, has arisen, like other dif- 
ferentiations, by degrees. The chain between the inorganic and 
organic is being filled up. On the one hand some/owr or five 
thousand compounds, once regarded as exclusively organic [!], 
have now been produced artificially from inorganic matter, and 
Chemists do not doubt their ability to produce the highest forms 
of organic matter." ! ! 

Such is becoming a common doctrine. A high Authority in 
Chemistry, W. Adling, in his lectures on 'Animal Chemistry" 
(London, 1866), affirms that — " In broad antagonism to the doc- 
trines which a few years ago were regarded as indisputable, we 
now find that the Chemist is capable of producing from carbonic 
acid and water [which have three elements only] a whole host of 
organic bodies ; and we see no reason to question his ultimate abil- 
ity to reproduce all animal and vegetable principles whatsoever." 

But all this bears no ratio whatever to the creation of the Aca- 
rus Crossii out of a solution of silex.in water; but it shows that 
the manufacture of organic compounds out of the elements of 
matter is a predicated result of the doctrine of the " Correlation 
of Physical and Vital Forces," which is aspiring at the highest 
forms of organic beings.* It is, however, beyond the ability of 

* Dr. Bastian supposed that he had succeeded in creating "truly organized plants, 
and small ciliated infusoria" out of inorganic matter. But more recently it has been 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DAK WINISM, ETC. 187 

chemistry to identify these simple products of the laboratory 
with organic compounds. The reasons can not be introduced 
here ; but I have gone extensively over the ground in the Insti- 
tutes of Medicine, particularly under the article on Composition, 
pp. 23-49. In the First Edition (1847), I remarked that we 
should necessarily expect, from the shades of elementary distinc- 
tions, that chemistry would confound, and even identify, many or- 
ganic compounds that are totally unlike in their nature. And 
this it actually does, in presenting to us sugar, vinegar, starch, 
gum arabic, &c., as chemically the same substance ; and in iden- 
tifying pus and cheese ; and again, the albumen of eggs, lymph, 
mucus, and the product of certain cancerous affections. Nor is 
there generally any agreement among the Chemists in their anal- 
yses of organic compounds. All the elaborations from vegetable 
substances are of a doubtful nature as it respects their relation to 
organic and inorganic compounds ; and what renders this certain 
are the alkalescent nature and crystalline structure of quinia, 
morphia, &c, which are never the conditions of natural organic 
compounds. Moreover, Chemistry identifies those two perfectly 
distinct alkaloids both as to the nature and the proportions of 
their elementary constituents. Indeed, some of these reputedly 
organic products may be made to undergo an apparently endless 
variety of transformations; such, for example, being the case 
with alcohol when subjected to the action of acids throughout 
its various changes. The moment chemical agencies begin their 
operations, artificial transformations necessarily ensue, and the 
nature of the organic compound is change'd in a corresponding 
manner. A large proportion of the resulting products are per- 
fectly new formations. Nor can there be any doubt that the re- 
puted proximate principles of plants and animals are intimately 
incorporated in any given compound, and have no such separate 
existence as chemistry teaches. It lies at the very basis of chem- 
istry that all the elaborations are the artificial results of affinities 
that have been set in motion. by the agents employed, and which 
are employed for that very purpose. How much more probable, 
therefore, that the supposed organic compounds fabricated by the 

found that the same organisms spring from atmospheric germs. The attempts to vi- 
talize dead organic and inorganic substances has utterly failed in the skillful labora- 
tories of Schultz and Dalle. 



188 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Chemist out of the elements of matter have very little relationship 
to those which are formed in the laboratory of organic nature, 
and hence how little encouragement the Chemist can take to 
himself 6f carrying his Art to the creation of complex animals. 
It is an absurdity, I say, to suppose that Chemists have created 
any proper organic compound out of inorganic matter, which 
they know to be the work of vegetable organisms alone, and 
which were created for that very purpose. Will any one of the 
reputed "flye thousand" of their manufactured compounds sus- 
tain animal life in any of its organisms from the highest to the 
lowest? They know it will not. And they know also that all 
truly organic compounds of an animal nature are speedily re- 
solved into their ultimate elements when separated from the liv- 
ing body, while no such result befalls the artificial compounds. 
It will be admitted, moreover, that without plants for the pur- 
pose of creating organic compounds out of the elements of mat- 
ter, the whole animal kingdom would speedily disappear from 
the earth. But the supposed organic constitution of the purely 
artificial productions is too important to the doctrine of the "Cor- 
relation of Forces " to be surrendered without a struggle on the 
part of the Materialists. In that struggle they must encounter 
the fact that no organic compound has yet appeared as the natu- 
ral result of the forces and laws of inorganic nature, and that an- 
imal organisms are incapable of organizing the simple elements 
of matter, or those elements in their inorganic combinations. 
Nothing but plants have ever been known to accomplish this re- 
sult in a solitary instance; and this is the great function which 
devolves upon them, and for the manifest purpose of supplying 
food, either directly or indirectly, to the animal kingdom. If in- 
organic forces are capable of rendering this service, why has God, 
or " nature," Who " never does any thing in vain," ordained the 
vegetable tribes? And what analogy is there between the high- 
ly organized structure of plants, their great variety of mechan- 
ism, their endowment with life, &c, and the appliances of the 
Chemist's laboratory? The very interrogatory renders the pre- 
tense in the highest degree absurd. Looking, therefore, at Nature 
alone, the only God of the infidel, I ask him whether it is proba- 
ble that his favorite nature, which, he concedes, "operates .by 
uniform laws," would have been so inconsistent as to have or- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 189 

dained the vegetable tribes for the purpose of organizing the 
elements of matter for the sustenance of the animal tribes, and 
at the same time have imposed a similar office upon the ele- 
ments of matter in virtue of their inherent properties, whatever 
physical influences may be brought to operate upon them — while 
at the same time, she has denied to animals the ability which is 
so lavishly bestowed upon the vegetable world? Moreover, if 
you can discern no difference between the Force which animates 
the organic kingdom and the forces of external nature, do not 
the fundamental distinctions between the organic structure of 
plants and all the supposable conditions of the elements of matter 
under every imaginable influence of the Chemist's laboratory, 
pronounce the impossibility of effecting, by any artificial process, 
the compounds which are the work of vegetable organic struc- 
ture, and then only through an elaborate series of organs which 
are everywhere distinguished by consummate designs, all work- 
ing harmoniously for this very result? But try the question as 
to nourishment for animals. What Liebig conceded to nature's 
laboratory at the sacrifice of his own in 1842, and of his own con- 
sistency, will doubtless be as true in 1870, and so remain to the 
end of time ; namely, that — 

" The first substance capable of affording nutriment 

TO ANIMALS IS THE LAST PRODUCT OF THE CEEATIVE EN- 
ERGY of Vegetables." 

And here is another of the latest and highest authorities, and 
who is, like Liebig, deeply interested in the manufacture of 
something approximating the simplest forms of undoubted or- 
ganic substances — Virchow, who says that — 

" Chemistry has not succeeded in forming a blastema [the gen- 
eral formative compound of tissues], nor physics in forming a 
cell. What does it matter?',' 

The eminent writer, Herbert Spencer, whom I have been late- 
ly quoting, will reappear in the course of our discussion, when it 
will be seen more distinctly that the doctrine of " Correlation or 
Metamorphosis of Forces," and the origin of Life in the forces of 
the inorganic world, conduct us to a still darker materialism; 
and that even a beginning of Life may be only hypothetically 
admitted to advance the sophistry into an eternity of being. 

Dr. Henry Maudsley, to whom I have already referred, is 



190 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

also one of the latest and ablest British writers upon the subject 
before us, and he incorporates the doctrine of materialism along 
with that of progressive development, as summarily expressed in 
the following quotation from his work on the "Physiology and 
Pathology of the Mind " (1867). 

"The development of Mind," he says, "both in individuals 
and through generations, is a gradual jwocess of organization — a 
process in which nature is undergoing her latest and most consum- 
mate development." B 

Of Dr. Maudsley's work there is an able Eeview in the British 
and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical Review for April, 1868, in which 
occurs the following summary of Dr. Maudsley's opinion upon 
the Soul. Thus— 

"To summarize the hypotheses advanced — every thing in 
Mind — every mental operation or result, is referred to organiza- 
tion, and no force other than nervous force is recognized. Mental 
phenomena result from the functional activity of nerve-cells 
called forth by impressions from without and from within, and 
modified and directed by the residua of impressions, concepts, and 
ideas heretofore existent. The like mental action exists in vary- 
ing extent in all animals; it is improvable by hereditary trans- 
mission, and some of it is innate. Mind is no individual entity, 
but an organic product of ever variable quantity and quality, 
modified by surrounding nature and by the circumstances of life, 
and progressively evolved from the reciprocal action of external 
objects and events, and of the activity of nerve matter, in such a 
way that the building up of the Mind is an act of the entire body, 
with which, indeed, Mind is conterminous" 

After numerous quotations from the work, the Eeview re- 
marks, that — "With this extract we conclude our sketch of the 
principal doctrines concerning mental physiology advanced by 
Dr. Maudsley. These doctrines can not be examined and be 
treated with indifference or contempt by the thoughtful and un- 
prejudiced; although we imagine some will sniff in them rank 
materialism, and scout them as unworthy of discussion." 

Here I shall pause in this discussion with materialistic writers, 
for the purpose of setting forth certain fundamental facts and 
principles that may be brought to the test of the doctrines al- 
ready presented, and that such as remain to be considered may 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 191 

be also subjected by the reader, as the inquiry advances, to the 
same criterion. Whatever hypothesis may come up in Materi- 
alism, or in any project relative to the origin of organic beings, 
it must take along with it the various facts which I shall have 
presented as to the organization of animals and plants, and their 
relations to the inorganic world. These will be seen, in a great 
variety of respects, to be fatal to every doctrine which denies the 
original creation of man and animals by a Designing Power, and 
in a state of full maturity of body and mind. The questions be- 
fore us will be abundantly settled in the few following pages ; 
but the discussion will be extended far beyond, on account of its 
important bearing upon materialism, and that the arguments of 
our ablest opponents may be brought under review. 

In the first place, as it is a favorite occupation with Material- 
ists to prove, what all admit, the necessity of matter to force, as it 
exists in this world, I may here transfer from my Institutes of 
Medicine the following proof of the existence of a Creator and of 
the creation of matter ; and, as it is founded upon the material- 
istic postulate, it should be acceptable to those who recognize 
nothing but matter. The Institutes, thus — The kingdoms of na- 
ture are governed by inherent powers ; but the existence of 
matter, whether organic or inorganic, is also indispensable to 
their respective forces. These forces, therefore, did not create 
matter ; and since matter can not create matter, and therefore 
did not create itself, it follows that its associate powers did not 
create themselves. Whence it is obvious that some greater 
Power exists by which the forces of nature were created in union 
with matter. I may also say that it is no small proof of a Crea- 
tor, that the elements of all combinations which are generated by 
animals and plants are derived from the inorganic kingdom, 
which will be allowed to be less productive than the organic. 
And since, especially, no organic body can generate any ele- 
mentary substance, nor the elements unite of themselves into or- 
ganic compounds, it follows that the whole was created by a Be- 
ing of greater Power. We can go no farther back than the ele- 
ments of matter. Here the atheist himself pauses in dismay. 
They proclaim a God, and reason submits to this limit of its 
power. 

The reader who may not be acquainted with physiology should 



192 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND* INSTINCT. 

understand that the common mode of representing the composi- 
tion of animals and plants as consisting of carbon, hydrogen, oxy- 
gen, and nitrogen, is intended to express the principal elements ; 
but that, instead of that limited number, there are not less than 
sixteen found in animals — namely, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitro- 
gen, potassium, sodium, chlorine, phosphorus, iron, sulphur, silicium, 
iodine, bromine, fluorine, manganese, magnesium. The same ele- 
ments, with the addition of aluminium, also occur in plants. The 
last six, however, are less uniformly present in animals than the 
first ten. With these premises I shall now proceed to transfer 
from my Institutes of Medicine, and other publications, the facts 
and the arguments which I laid before the world many years ago 
relative to the composition of organic beings. 

Now, Chemistry deludes us with the notion that animals and 
plants are made up of only four elements, because they are suffi- 
cient, or only three of them, to form an organic compound. But 
we are speaking of the entire body, not of simple compounds. 
The latter are quite worthless, excepting as food, unless made up, 
along with the other elements, into tissues and organs, blood or 
sap, and a symmetrical whole. 

Of all the foregoing elements, only two, oxygen and nitrogen, 
as they compose atmospheric air, exist in a condition which 
would possibly admit of their coming together without some 
special agency directed by an intelligence at least as exalted as 
human reason. With this auxiliary they must also all exist in a 
simple, elementary, and gaseous condition. Only two of the whole 
number have that requisite simplicity — oxygen and nitrogen! 
Well may the advocates of the spontaneous origin of living be- 
ings, or even of the most simple organic compounds, in the ele- 
ments of matter, be appalled at this suggestion, and condemn his 
wits that it had not occurred to him before he had lost them. 
But let us now tell him of all the facts. Of the two other indis- 
pensable elements for an organic compound, carbon is either sol- 
id, or almost indissolubly united with oxygen in the form of 
carbonic acid (though readily decompounded by the leaves of 
plants), and hydrogen is also chemically bound up with oxygen 
in the form of water; while chlorine, which has a far greater 
affinity for hydrogen, neglects it entirely. Here, then, are the 
four principal elements, and how ridiculous does the assumption 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 193 

appear of their spontaneous union into any sort of a compound, 
organic or inorganic! That erudite Chemists should have neg- 
lected this consideration is a most remarkable proof of the blind- 
ing nature of an ambitious hypothesis. As to the remaining 
twelve elements, they all exist in a solid form, and, with the ex- 
ception of iron, manganese, and sulphur, always in combination 
with one or more of other elements. But let us suppose that 
they were all floating together, along with nearly fifty other 
known elements of matter, in a gaseous condition, it is sufficient- 
ly manifest that they could not have emerged from the common 
mixture through any other agency than that of a Designing, Al- 
mighty Power — to say nothing of their incorporation into an or- 
ganization like the animal ovum, which embraces the rudimenta- 
ry whole of the mature being, or how that ovum was developed 
into a viviparous animal by the agencies of the inorganic world. 
But setting aside Creative Power, and considering that the inor- 
ganic materials when aggregated together into organic com- 
pounds must be endowed with Life, or, rather, what is called 
Life, whatever it may be, which must have been developed in 
the elementary substances before they could have been brought 
into organic combinations, will the Materialist be able to offer 
the most vague conjecture as to how this phenomenon came to 
pass, even though it be conceded that Life is some modification 
of an inorganic force? What, I say, in the latter case, so modi- 
fied the physical force as to organize the elements into living 
compounds? 

We will now pause a moment to look at the developmental 
doctrines under the foregoing aspect of our subject; and taking 
the elements as we find them in nature, one of the principal, car- 
Ion, and the most abundant in plants and animals, either form- 
ing with oxygen carbonic acid, or existing in a solid state, and 
the next most abundant, hydrogen, bound up in water, and most 
of the remaining in a solid state, and all of them more or less re- 
mote from each other, we shall be in the midst of a labyrinth of 
absurdities. The sixteen elements found in plants and animals 
are supposed to have separated themselves from the sixty-three 
which compose the inorganic kingdom — one series of the sixteen 
congregating and uniting in such a manner as to form plants, 
whose office should forever be 'that of organizing the same ele- 

13 . 



194 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

merits out of their original state; while the other series of six- 
teen came from far or near, and coalesced in such a manner as to 
form animals, which should be forever incapable of organizing the 
same elements out of their original state, but always dependent 
for their continued existence upon the organizing constitution of 
the vegetable tribes. Let us also keep in mind the compounded 
and solid condition of their elements when they put forth their 
elective affinities to form the two complex systems of Design — 
each system abounding with its own peculiar designs of a high- 
ly diversified and harmonious nature, all the designs in each 
system working together for the good of each other and for the 
great ends of their being; while the vegetable system, that it 
may fulfill its great final cause of supplying food to the animal 
kingdom, is endowed with the faculty of decompounding inor- 
ganic compounds and of tearing the very rocks asunder. More- 
over, such are the mutual relations of plants and animals, the lat- 
ter are made to supply the best materials for the sustenance of the 
former; so that the living plant builds up the animal, and the 
animal, living or dead, gives back first to the vegetable kingdom, 
and ultimately " to the dust," its borrowed fabric. 

Farther — the requisite elements for animals and plants are 
never present in any given localities of the earth, while water 
contains only two of them. Hence the necessity of manures, 
derived either from animal or vegetable sources — however much 
the vegetable tribes may gain a contribution from the mineral 
kingdom. And this will be seen to be another insuperable 
proof that the elements of plants and animals must have been 
assembled by Supernatural Power, and when once brought into 
this condition, and simultaneously throughout the globe, they 
became the ready sources of supply to all subsequent genera- 
tions. As to the earliest sustenance of plants, we shall see that 
this naturally resulted from the sedimentary deposit immediate- 
ly consequent on the organization of the earth {Appendix I.). 

Besides the foregoing supposed coalescence of the elements of 
matter through their own inherent properties, the hypothesis 
must also necessarily mean by " the laws of nature," that the 
atmosphere and water, which are indispensable to every living 
being, plants as well as animals, contributed a very marvellous 
organizing influence to bring about their exact and necessary 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 195 

adaptations to every such being. Indeed, so wonderful and 
complex are these exigencies to all organic life, that they pro- 
claim, in themselves alone, the necessity of a designing, creative 
Power. A single animal or plant would have been conclusive 
of this ; and what, therefore, should be the united force of all the 
animal and vegetable tribes, with respiratory organs in the for- 
mer of endless variety, according to the nature of the being (as 
insects, aquatic animals, land animals), by which the adaptations 
of all the immense variety to atmospheric air are exactly ad- 
justed. And coming to the food of animals and plants, the same 
evidences of Design are incomparably greater — an endless vari- 
ety in the structure of the digestive organs, according to the na- 
ture of the food and the nature of the organic being. Here, also, 
should be reproduced the radical distinction in that respect be- 
tween animals and plants — the former subsisting upon organic 
compounds alone, while the latter upon the simple elements of 
matter alone, and carry along the wonderful evidence of Design 
in the existence of the animal kingdom as dependent upon the 
vegetable for a union of the requisite elements into organic com- 
pounds. But the most curious circumstance is the certain fact 
that plants got into being before animals, which implies an 
amazing degree of foresight in thus anticipating the necessities 
of the animal tribes. If, also, there were any foundation for the 
doctrine of the origin of living beings out of the elements of 
matter through the forces and laws of inorganic nature, then all 
the varieties of food as it respects the animal tribes must have 
had, as well as atmospheric air and water, a precise tributary in- 
fluence in effecting their organization, in every detail and in all 
the designs, according to the nature of the species. The same af- 
firmation may be made of light and its average duration of twelve 
hours ; particularly in its relation to plants. This agent, there- 
fore, and its' periodical nature, must have had an important con- 
curring organizing influence. Hence it would follow that the 
Creator ordained the earth's revolution upon its axis as much 
with a view to the creative power of light as to the subsequent 
exigencies of living beings ; which supposes the absurdity, as in 
the other cases, that He thus devised a plan for the genesis of 
organic life instead of introducing life Himself by the simple ex- 
cise of His own power. 



196 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

But all the foregoing organizing and adapting influences nec- 
essarily suppose that other agencies had been in operation in de- 
taching the 16 elements out of the 63, breaking up their com- 
pounds into simple elementary substances, converting them from 
a solid to a gaseous condition, and assembling them from places 
remote from each other, and then combining them in special 
modes, not only in their peculiar relations to the two organic de- 
partments respectively, but in the animal tribes according to the 
nature of every organ, and, finally, elaborating, adjusting, and 
uniting harmoniously into systems of design the component or- 
gans of each apparatus, and the entire assemblage into one har- 
monious whole, with special functions for every individual part — 
saying nothing of a thousand details, anatomical, physiological, 
&c, which would require a large volume for their exposition. 

Let the intelligent reader consider, also, that the four principal 
elements of every plant and animal form scarcely a dozen com- 
binations in the mineral kingdom ; a fact, indeed, which clearly 
contradistinguishes the organic from the inorganic world as it 
respects their fundamental constitution. If both departments of 
nature are endowed in common with the same forces, and the el- 
ements of living beings have come into organic union under the 
influence of the forces and laws of inanimate matter, then, I say, 
there should not exist the contrast between a dozen combinations 
of those four elements in the inorganic world and millions of 
them in the organic ! 

The Force or Principle of Life by which all living beings are 
governed, and the forces of external nature, are, as we have seen, 
in absolute opposition to each other, as denoted by all the phe- 
nomena of animate and inanimate nature. The former is forever 
conservative and creative, the latter always laying waste. This 
is manifest enough to ordinary observation in the manner in 
which the agencies of inorganic nature are destructive of min- 
eral compounds, as everywhere displayed upon the surface of the 
globe, and beneath the surface in the production of volcanoes, 
&c. They never build up, but are forever tearing down. Are 
these the forces, then, to gather the elements of matter, were the 
latter even in a condition to be thus assembled, and unite them 
into the endless but harmonious labyrinths of organic beings — to 
infuse into them a principle of life that shall defeat their destruc- 



SPONTANEOUS GENEEATION.— DAEWINISM, ETC. 197 

tive energy? Nay, more; as soon as Life becomes extinct, the 
forces of inorganic nature, that very heat which is said to be con- 
verted into vital force, speedily reduce the body to the most sim- 
ple condition of minerals. Is that an evidence of their organiz- 
ing tendency, but never disturbing its elementary combinations 
while life exists? This rapidity of dissolution in all animals is 
owino- much to the numerous elements which enter into their 

o 

composition, but more to the great abundance of nitrogen. Upon 
this element depends the ready explosion of the fulminating 
compounds; and it performs the same disrupting office in the 
dead animal organism. And so would it rend asunder the liv- 
ing being, were it not restrained by a Principle or Force in di- 
rect antagonism with the forces of inorganic nature. Had ni- 
trogen been incorporated with mineral compounds there would 
have been no stability among them ; and even in the atmospher- 
ic air it is disconnected from the oxygen. All such compounds 
would have been perpetually undergoing decomposition, until 
finally the whole of the nitrogen would have gone off by itself, 
and nothing of the original compound would have remained. 
This wonder-working element, so rarely found in the inorganic 
world (except as a constituent of the atmosphere), forms so im- 
portant a fact, through its incorporation in the animal organism, 
in proving a specific Force known as the Vital Principle, that I 
devoted much consideration to it in my work on the "Philosophy 
of Vitality and the Modus Operandi of Remedies " (1842); and I am 
led to the present reference to the subject by its important bear- 
ing upon Materialism as it respects the Soul. It would be a vain 
attempt, as I have said, to deduce the existence of the latter from 
its phenomena while the same rule of induction is denied to the 
equally unique phenomena of life.* 

We shall ultimately meet with distinguished advocates of 
Darwin's doctrine of development by " Natural Selection " who 
begin with an elementary cell, and evolve all animated nature 
from it, but assume that the cell never had a beginning — is self- 
existent. It will be thus seen that these writers have escaped 
the absurdities of the origin of living beings in the elements of 

* In view of the foregoing considerations, it may be anticipated that the doctrine 
of the animalcular origin of miasmatic diseases, as resulting from the decomposition 
of vegetable matter, will ere long disappear from the books. 



198 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

matter through their inherent properties, and at no greater ex- 
pense of faith in a Creative Power. But let us, for the purpose 
of definitively settling the important question relative to a "pri- 
mordial form" or "cell," imagine them. as far advanced as the 
perfect ovum — one for every species of animals, instead of Dar- 
win's deformity of "one primordial," or Spencer's "cell," em- 
bracing the potential whole of all the races of animals. What 
would have been the condition of all the ova of animals which 
are now matured within the mother, and the whole process of 
development dependent upon the mother's blood — what, I say, 
would have been the condition of such ova had they been left 
to the nursing care of the physical agencies of inorganic nature? 
But let us concede the absurdity of their resistance of such de- 
structive agencies ; whence, then, would they have been sup- 
plied with the necessary organic nourishment, or any nourish- 
ment at all, were it possible that the elements of matter could 
have sustained them and advanced their development and 
growth? But by no possibility can animal organisms, even of 
the very lowest grade, be nourished by inorganic matter. The 
protozoon, for example, though destitute of mouth, stomach, in- 
testine, imbibes solid particles of organic matter into the interior 
of its body, and there digests them ; nor can it appropriate inor- 
ganic matter. In respect to all viviparous animals there must 
have always been a mature parent to supply the necessary. ma-' 
terial and protection till the development of the ova had ad- 
vanced to the stage of infancy ; and this involves the necessity of 
an antecedent creation of a mature parent. 

And here it becomes necessary to state, in order to avoid the 
imputation of adopting the opinions of others as original with 
myself, that the arguments which I am about to present as to 
the creation of man, and all mammiferous animals, and all birds 
whose young are unfledged, in a state of maturity both of body 
and mindy were originally advanced by myself in my work on 
the " Soul and Instinctive Pkinciple," 1848, and repeated in 
my " Theoretical Geology," 1856, which were at once dis- 
tributed extensively in Europe; because these arguments, in re- 
lation to man, were advanced by M. Guizot, in " Le Eglise et la 
Societe Chretienne" 1861, and from him have been repeated by 
others. The argument in relation to man is, as will be seen, 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 199 

quoted by the Duke of Argyll, in his " Reign of Law" as orig- 
inal with M. Guizot. I would add, however, that what is now 
said in relation to the ova of animals did not appear in those 
works, but in my "Institutes of Medicine," 1847. 

Whether the ovum be that of an oviparous or a viviparous 
animal, it equally requires organic compounds for its nourish- 
ment and development. In the case of the latter it is nourished 
and carried through all the stages of development to that of in- 
fancy by the blood of the parent, and the moment that inde- 
pendent life begins its nourishment must be supplied through 
the complicated apparatus of the digestive organs. It must be 
subjected to the vivifying and reorganizing action of the gastric 
juice, to the farther influence of the bile, saliva, and pancreatic 
fluid, to the whole labyrinth of the lacteal vessels, and finally to 
the lungs, the sanguiferous organs, the kidneys, &c. All these 
are indispensable means to any farther development or continued 
existence after the earliest stage of infantile life, both in vivipa- 
rous and oviparous animals. These are all familiar facts; but 
their statement is rendered necessary by the developmental hy- 
potheses. We shall have seen, also, that there are many other 
isolated facts, each one of which will by itself prove the creation 
of man and animals in a state of full maturity. To the funda- 
mental facts and laws, as witnessed in organic nature, we must 
appeal for all our inductions as to the development of living be- 
ings, from the germ to their state of maturity ; and least of all 
may we devise hypotheses which, like the developmental, are in 
direct conflict with what is most fundamental in nature. The 
laws and agencies of the inorganic world can in no respect divert 
the progress of development in any individual from its funda- 
mental details. They have no relationship to those which gov- 
ern the animate world ; and the delusive appearances which 
arise from the influences of climate, soil, domestication, &c, are 
in no respect diversions from the original structure of species. 
ISTor is there any thing known of structure that can supply the 
smallest ground for the opinion that it may undergo mutations 
in any species of animals or plants. The subject is often misap- 
prehended or misrepresented by adducing some isolated part, as 
the brain and skull, as a basis of comparison for distinguishing or 
identifying species, when the only proper ground is the entire 



200 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

organism, especially such parts of it as form the distinct charac- 
teristics of species. All the varieties of the dog and of other 
animals have, respectively, the same specific marks ; and so of 
men. Color is no more a specific distinction in man than in an- 
imals. When the artificial influences that have introduced the 
varieties are removed, and the animal returns to its native 
haunts, the original conformation, habits, &c, of the species are 
often restored. And so of plants. The castor-oil plant (Eicinus 
communis), for example, is a perennial tree in some countries, and 
an annual herbaceous plant in others. But, mutatis mutandis, the 
seeds of the former will produce the herb in the climate of the 
latter, and vice versa. No natural or artificial influences have 
affected the essential details of organization in man, animals, or 
plants, in any one species, so far as observation reaches. 

I may also recur to the ova of animals for another explosion 
of all the developmental doctrines, and of the mutation of spe- 
cies. The microscope assures us that, from the beginning of the 
development of the germinal cell, it manifests, according to the 
species, an undeviating peculiarity of organization, whatever the 
varieties of the species ; nor* can this peculiarity be in the least 
diverted by any artificial influences. No other proof than this 
universal and undeviating plan of organic life can be necessary 
to demonstrate the fallacy of every developmental hypothesis. 
Whatever variety may have been introduced through a long se- 
ries of modifying causes, the characteristics of the variety are in- 
capable of detection by the microscope during the development 
of the ovum. Nothing would astonish the observer more — 
whatever his developmental hypothesis — than to witness the ru- 
dimentary development of the ovum of one species putting on 
the characteristics of another species, however nearly allied. So 
closely, indeed, does nature adhere to this principle of uniformi- 
ty, should one species manifest a change into another species, it 
would seriously disturb the very foundations of physiology. So 
it has been ever since man began to record his observations. 
The entombed animals of Eg}~pt of more than three thousand 
years ago differ in no respect from those of our own day ; and 
the seeds obtained from the sarcophagus produce the same spe- 
cies as those of our own times. Aristotle's descriptions of ani- 
mals two thousand years ago are perfect portraits of the species 
which have come down to us. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 201 

All analogy, therefore, as it relates to every species of the al- 
most countless numbers that compose the animal and vegetable 
tribes, and which form our only ground of reasoning on the ques- 
tion before us, is fatally opposed to Darwinism, Spencerism, and 
to all other artificial doctrines of the origin of species; and this is 
most distinctly avowed by the violent manner in which the pro- 
jectors defy all analogy, both as to organic and inorganic nature, 
and repose the doctrines upon the assumption that hundreds of 
thousands or millions of years ago the requisite condition of in- 
organic nature existed, either for the union of the elements of 
matter into living beings, or the development of a " cell," or 
some other "primordial form," and the transmutation of species 
— all the way from the invisible animalcule to the elephant, 
whale, and lastly, to man. 

The advocates of the creative forces of inorganic nature pre- 
sent an argument founded upon the development of the chick 
from the egg by the agency of external influences, but are very 
silent as to the uterine animal. Were it, however, doubtful 
whether a fundamental principle of analogy obtains as to the 
origin of the ova both of viviparous and oviparous animals, it 
is settled by the fact that the unfledged chick would perish as 
quickly without the provident care of a mature bird as the in- 
fant mammiferous animal. ■ 

In respect to Darwinism, it should be understood that, although 
it professes to expound the "Origin of Species" (and, indeed, they 
have become equivalent terms), there is not the slightest expla- 
nation rendered of the causes through which new species are de- 
veloped out of the pre-existing. And although the doctrine pro- 
fesses to rest upon the laws of nature, it is an unmitigated as- 
sumption in direct conflict with every known law or fact that re- 
lates to the question, as I shall have abundantly demonstrated. 
All proof is merged in a demand for a sufficient amount of time. 
The argument is — given the necessary time, and it will introduce 
all the various species. All the collateral reasoning is predicated 
of circumstances which yield no support. 

But our Projector contradicts his doctrine when speaking of 
the law of inheritance, which is its indispensable foundation ; for 
he remarks that — "It is that cause which alone, so far as we posi- 
tively know, produces organisms quite like, or nearly like, each oth- 



202 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

er." The law, therefore, as I have said, should hold good for- 
ever. But he endeavors to annul the law by assuming that long 
periods of time will give it a different operation. He also brings 
to the assistance of time another fiction of intended importance, 
which he designates as a law of "Natural Selection ;" which, how- 
ever, has not the most remote connection with the question, but 
simply refers to the perpetuity of species that escape the destruc- 
tive agencies of which others have become the victims. Such as 
have escaped extinction have done so through "a struggle for 
existence;" and the most enduring are regarded either as newly 
developed species or as the progenitors of new ones.* That is 
all ; and it is only on common ground with the geological doc- 
trine of successive creations and extinctions. His "Laws of Va- 
riation" also, merely contemplate the facts as they exist without 
inquiring into the sources of the phenomena; leaving the "ori- 
gin of species," as respects their causes, just as we find them. 
But, as if for the purpose of imparting to the doctrine an air of 
demonstration, he introduces numerous facts under the imposing 
designation of "Correlation of Growth? This, however, is noth- 
ing more than affirming that every species is so constituted that 
all its parts are in harmonious relation. 

Every species, however allied to others, possesses some pecul- 
iarity of* structure, and where any one part has the greatest va- 
riations all other parts have correlated or reciprocal relations. 
That was the Creator's work, and the " Correlation of Growth " 
means nothing more. — As to hybrid animals, the pretense of its 
forming any justification of the doctrine is at once confuted by 
the fact 'that a single "cross" is generally the limit of transmis- 
sion. Nor are hybrids met with in a state of nature, either on 
land or in the water ; which is a crushing fact to the schemes of 
the origin of species. The law is universal, designed for a distinct 

* This notion had been already advanced by Lamarck in respect to animals, and 
by De Candolle in regard to plants. The former supposes that the superior animals 
drove the inferior into desert places where they gradually died out. De Candolle's 
opinion of plants has a limited truth. He remarks that — "The first plants which 
establish themselves by chance in a particular spot tend, by the mere occupancy of 
space, to exclude other species, the greater to choke the smaller, and the more pro- 
lific gradually make themselves masters of the ground." And yet the inferior tribes 
of animals and plants maintain their ground about as well as the superior — especially 
the animal. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. —DARWINISM, ETC. 203 

perpetuation of the species. Every species is endowed with pe- 
culiarities of instinct which restrain all sexual connection with 
other species. It is a leading characteristic of species. The 
crow, robin, goose, lion, whale, flies — all species of animals, 
herd, each respectively, by themselves. Among the four hun- 
dred and thirty different species of humming-birds, it is stated by 
the highest authority, Mr. Gould, in his Trochilidce, that — "After 
a period of twelve years of incessant labor, I have never observed 
an instance of any variation which would lead me to suppose that 
it was the result of a union of two species." — In no respect has 
the Creator been more provident than in debarring an intermin- 
gling of species; and it forms a conclusive proof of their original 
creation as they now exist. The hybrid animal, and even the 
hybrid plant, is the work of civilization ; the grand design being 
carried also throughout the vegetable tribes. 

As to the •metamorphic animals, the favorable conclusions which 
have been predicated of them by the advocates of Darwinism 
violate the soundest principles in the philosophy of organic life ; 
and this most magnificent feature in the Designs of the Creator, 
so far as obvious to the senses, is made an integral part in a sys- 
tem of deformities. This I shall render manifest when speaking 
of metamorphosis in my demonstration of the Instinctive Princi- 
ple, where I shall show that it forms one of the most conclusive 
evidences against all the aspects of Darwinism and Spencerism. 

Let us now imagine the absurdit}' that mammiferous animals 
and man were created in a condition as far advanced as the stage 
of infancy — what, I ask, could have nourished those infants but 
a mature adult, yielding milk? And s6 of all birds whose off- 
spring are unfledged — what but a mature parent, endowed with 
a marvellous Instinct, could have supplied the necessary food to 
those perfectly helpless beings ? This collateral evidence of In- 
stinct, which extends throughout the feathered race, is as much 
a constitutional provision for the life of the offspring as that 
which is designed for self-preservation, and should settle the 
question with all who can not rely alone on the exigencies of in- 
fancy ; while a similar corroborating testimony exists in the pa- 
rental Instinct of mammiferous animals, and another in the pro- 
vision of the lacteal gland, and still another in the Instinct which 
conducts the infant animal to the source of sustenance. 



i 



204 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Immediately allied to the foregoing is another indisputable 
proof of the creation of man and all the foregoing animals in a 
state of maturity, which consists in the mutual attachments of 
mother and offspring, and which could have had its foundation 
only in the original constitution of the mature being, simultane- 
ously ingrafted upon the parent and the germ, and, on the part 
of both, for the specific end of preservation. And while this 
must be approved by all common sense, it derives farther con- 
firmation from the peculiarities of Instinct in every species of ani- 
mals, and especially so where the organization and Instinct relate 
to distinct varieties of food — being the product of the parent in 
the case of mammiferous animals, and wholly extraneous in that 
of birds; while in respect to the former the digestive apparatus 
is so constituted in certain tribes as to be suited alone to animal 
food after the offspring becomes independent, and in other tribes 
to vegetable substances only. And how clearly, also, does the 
failure of parental care and attachments among animals at or- 
dained times denote a law of nature whose commencement began 
with the mature parent. And if all this be not sufficiently con- 
vincing, I may bring up the elaborate means with which animals 
and plants are provided for the perpetuation of their species. 

Look now at the contrast between the developmental doctrines 
and the statements in the Mosaic Narrative, and observe how 
forcibly it comes to the proof of the Inspiration of the latter. 
By this we are told that man and beast were created in a state 
of maturity out of the earth ; but had it been said that the ma- 
terials of the earth organized themselves into living beings, the 
Narrative would have 'been rejected by all as an imposture. 
Nay, more, had it been affirmed that man was created in the 
condition of an infant, and thus left to grow up to maturity un- 
der the laws which govern his organization, without maternal 
sustenance and protection, without scarcely a ray of instinct, des- 
titute of volition and muscular power, the personification of help- 
lessness, the statement would be invariably pronounced absurd. 
On the contrary, the Narrative declares exactly what the exigen- 
cies of the case demand — the creation of both man and woman 
in a state of maturity, both of body and mind. Were there noth- 
ing besides to substantiate the Eevelation of Heaven, the proof 
which is offered by the infancy of man, in being conclusive as to 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 205 

his origin, would extend itself to every other statement in the 
Mosaic Record. What, also, I have thus said as to the absolute 
exigencies of man in early life is equally applicable to all mam- 
miferous animals, and to all birds whose offspring are at first un- 
fledged, in respect to the nature of their early food, who would, 
of course, immediately perish without the sustenance afforded by 
the parent. But the infant quadruped, yea, the newly - born 
orang-outang, is immeasurably better provided for its own inde- 
pendence than the human infant. The former has all the instinct 
in operation necessary to procure the means of sustenance, with 
only the passive submission of the dam in yielding the earliest 
sustenance, and can in all other respects manage for itself; but 
would immediately perish without the food supplied by the ma- 
ture parent. And while the mammiferous animal, including all 
the tribes of apes, uses its limbs freely on the day of its birth, 
the human infant has scarcely the ability to stand erect at the ex- 
piration of a year, much less to clothe and clean itself. Nor is 
the child as far advanced at a dozen years in a condition of in- 
dependence. And here I may add, in farther disproof of the 
developmental hypotheses, the constitutional distinctions as to 
Reason, Instinct, and physical endowments, which greatly es- 
trange the human race from the most perfect tribes of animals, 
living or extinct. 

In looking around for the species of animal out of which the 
human race is supposed to have been developed, that which ap- 
proximates man most nearly in organization must enjoy the dis- 
tinguished honor of paternity -5— the gorilla, orang-outang, or some 
one of the monkey tribe. It is considered that organization in 
these instances is so close upon that of man as to supply in this 
abstract sense a plausible pretense for a still closer relationship ; 
and it follows, therefore, by the analogies of nature, as well as by 
the law of inheritance, that Reason, the grand characteristic of 
the human race, should have also made some approximation in 
the gorilla or chimpanzee towards that Divine attribute of man. 
But I shall endeavor to demonstrate that no animal possesses 
that endowment, and that the whole tribe of apes and monkeys 
are less provided with instinct than the honey-bee, while man 
dwindles into insignificance by the side of the gorilla and orang- 
outang in respect to Instinct. However great, therefore, may be 



206 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the coincidence between the organization of man and the tribe 
of apes, it is impossible to evade the fundamental distinction 
which is established by Eeason and Instinct. But even in re- 
spect to organization there are some things which concur with 
reason in enforcing the conclusions to which it conducts us. 
Man, for example, walks erect, but that would not be sufficient- 
ly characteristic to prove the distinct and independent nature of 
his being. The absence, howevei^of all correspondence in the 
uses of his upper and lower extremities, while in the quadruma- 
nous tribes they subserve the same purposes, does estrange them 
fundamentally from each other; and this argument is vastly in- 
creased by the fact that the arms of the human species are in- 
tended to fulfill the promptings of Eeason, while the fore legs of 
the quadrumana are scarcely more tributary to Instinct than the 
posterior legs — all of which are properly legs. It is true, there 
is an approximation in the anatomical structure of the fore and 
hind feet to those of man, especially in the Gorilla ; but the 
proper criterion is the uses of each. Each, in the animals, is pre- 
hensile, and they are employed in walking. Their fore feet ad- 
minister scarcely more to the purposes of Instinct than the fore 
legs and feet of all animals possessing clavicles, who use them 
more or less as arms and hands ; such as the cat, lion, squirrel, 
bear, &c; while, like these, the whole tribe of apes walk upon 
" all fours." • 

' ' And while all other creatures to the dust 
Bend their low look, to man a front sublime 
He gave, and bade him ever scan the skies, 
And to the stars lift up his lofty gaze." — Ovid. 

When I come to the Demonstration of the Instinctive Princi- 
ple (Chapter XVI.), I shall have something to say on the com- 
parative improvement of which Eeason and Instinct are capable. 
But I may now remark that if man and the ape were akin to 
each other, the primitive man should have been as incapable of 
mental culture as the ape itself. It is true, as will be seen in our 
Chapter on the Antiquity of Man, it is assumed that no intellect- 
ual progress was made by the human race for tens of thousands 
of years. But if that were so, the same limit of improvement 
should have still obtained, not only through constitutional inher- 
itance for thousands of ages, but because of the evidence sup- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 207 

plied by the stationary nature of Instinct, in all species of ani- 
mals, from the lowest up to the quadrumanous tribes. I would 
refer the reader, also, to many other important distinctions be- 
tween the human mind and the Principle of Instinct embraced 
in the Chapter on the latter subject — such as the relative uses of 
Keason and Instinct, and that great characteristic of the human 
race, the Keligious sentiment. 

It would be disastrous to the hypothesis to assume the ex- 
tinction of the supposed immediate ancestor of man, which would 
be as little likely to become extinct as man himself; nor does 
geology supply any evidence of a higher order of animal than 
the gorilla and chimpanzee. 

The Darwinian, or the advocate of whatever doctrine of th'e 
origin of species that departs from the Mosaic, being thus vari- 
ously defeated, doubtless points in a characteristic manner, for 
the means of sustenance for the infant man, to those whelps, 
Eomulus and Eemus, that sucked the Wolf. Then I apply to 
him the experimentum cruris, and ask him, with overflowing sym- 
pathy for his offspring, whether he would be willing to intrust 
his darling infant for an instant of time to the hairy embraces, 
or the provident care, of a baboon or a gorilla, and whether he 
would not himself be appalled should he encounter one of them 
in the wilderness? Why, also, has it happened, if Man be de- 
veloped from any of the tribes of apes, that the parent has so 
completely estranged itself from its offspring ? And the same in- 
terrogatory may be applied to the different species of animals in 
the progressive series. Even Professor Huxley, with all his 
devotion to Darwinism, laughs at the idea of his direct descent 
from a monkey. "What," he exclaims, " an enormous gulf" be- 
tween us — "practically infinite /" Nay, even Wallace, the com- 
petitor of Darwin for the honor of starting the doctrine of " Nat- 
ural Selection," abandons, in his Contributions to the Theory of Nat- 
ural Selection, all hope of showing that man was developed out of 
animals, and argues strongly against the assumption. If it be con- 
ceded, therefore, that man is an exception to the developmental 
doctrine, its visionary character is thus fully betrayed. There 
is no such inconsistency in nature as a law for the production of 
animals and another for man, who is so completely allied in or- 
ganization and functions to the higher orders of animals ; and if, 



208 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

also, it be admitted tbat man was a direct creation, according to 
the Inspired Narrative, the admission must be extended to the 
animal tribes. And yet we shall see that certain Darwinists, 
to surmount the difficulty of applying the developmental hy- 
pothesis to man, or from a disinclination to carry the doctrine to 
such an extreme extent against the Biblical statement, compro- 
mise the matter by delegating the animal races to the laws of 
nature and the human race to the more intelligible work of the 
Almighty! — while the origin of the vegetable kingdom is ex- 
cluded from the scheme, or consigned to the vivifying and de- 
signing properties of the elements of matter ! 

But in respect to man and animals there is a lingering hope of 
reconciliation. The want of a closer alliance of species between 
the brute and human races than is supplied by the tribes of mon- 
keys has so alarmed the Darwinian school, that it has recently 
brought forward bones of the human species, in which it is al- 
leged that there can be seen some variations from the conforma- 
tion of the existing races, and which are assumed to be signifi- 
cant of a species intermediate between man and monkeys. But 
if this be so, it in no respect affects the question before us, since 
every race of mankind is marked by some peculiarities in the 
bony fabric, especially in the skull ; and in multitudes of in- 
stances there are special conformations peculiar to individuals. 
Such, indeed, are the varieties of conformation of the bones of 
the skull among the different races of men that they have formed 
the principal ground of the doctrine that the several races have 
descended from as many distinct ancestors. The deductions, 
therefore, in behalf of Darwinism from the reputed peculiarities 
of recently discovered bones, even were they sustained as they 
necessarily should be, would amount to nothing more than such 
as have been predicated of the existing races of men in proof of 
the multiplicity of original ancestors. 

All such expedients, however, have no tendency to affect the 
necessary implication of Darwinism that Man was evolved out 
of the Monkey tribe ; and this has become so offensive to human 
pride that some of the Idolaters have taken the reponsibility of 
misrepresenting their master's doctrine. " The present method 
of escaping the difficulty," says the Christian Union, in a notice 
of Dr. Cubbold's Biological Lecture, of the British Scientific As- 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 209 

sociation, "is by continually begging the world to please to re- 
member that all these divergent groups, which thus appear on 
the geological panorama' so closely on one another's heels, did 
not, according to the right interpretation of their master's theory, 
grow out of one another, but that they represent the terminals of 
certain, lines which have been running along down parallel from 
some remote progenitor, from whom the different types took their 
common origin and also their divergent direction. Thus they 
say that Man did not necessarily derive from the Ape ; but from 
some common ancestor of both two lines took their start, and 
each, under the guidance of natural selection, pursued its separate 
development, till Man came in one line and Monkey in the other" 

The foregoing subterfuge may render the doctrine less offens- 
ive to some. But all forms of the developmental hj-pothesis, in 
whatever shape they may be urged upon the ignorant and cred- 
ulous, are alike condemned by our demonstrations, through 
which we show the absurdities of supposing that a cell, or an 
ovum, or any other imaginable undeveloped form of Man and 
mammiferous animals, could have survived a momentary inde- 
pendence of its placental relations, or the agencies of the exter- 
nal world ; and that, moreover, from the exigencies of the case, 
man, mammiferous animals, and birds must have been created in 
a state of perfect maturity of body, and with Mind enough to 
supply themselves and their offspring with the means of suste- 
nance and protection. 

Nor does tlie recent work by St. George Mivart on the Gen- 
esis of Species, although intended to modify, in some minor re- 
spects, the Darwinian hypothesis, affect in the least the absurdi- 
ties of the developmental scheme, or its pantheistical character. 
Like some other writers upon the same topic, he invokes the 
opinion of St. Augustine and other "Fathers of the Church" as 
favorable to the doctrine of the origin of living beings in the 
laws of inorganic nature or spontaneity of being. " They hold," 
he says, "that when God said 'Let the waters produce,' 'Let the 
earth produce,' He conferred forces on the elements of earth and wa- 
ter which enabled them naturally to produce the various species of or- 
ganic beings. This power, they thought, remains attached to the 
elements throughout cdl time." These opinions are inculcated by 
Mivart, and are applied by him to the origin of man as well as 

14 



210 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

animals. They are, of course, obnoxious to all the objections 
which I have arrayed against the assumption of spontaneity of 
living beings, creation by law, Darwinism, and every other shape 
of the developmental doctrine. 

Darwinism has done its best to avoid so great an offense to 
"Science" and creative consistency as to allow man to be ex- 
cepted from its scheme, and is always expecting that something 
will turn up to justify its only rational conclusions that are 
founded upon the resemblance of the organization of the monkey 
tribes to that of the human species. That is the fundamental ba- 
sis, and there can be no departure from it. It must take man 
along, or abandon the whole ground as a weak invention.* 

Here is an exemplification of* a part of the philosophy which 
governs Darwin's " Origin of Species by means of Natural Selec- 
tion, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life;" 
though it does not tell us how the various species were devel- 
oped out of each other after their succession started from the 
"one primordial form;" for whatever ambiguities may have 
been woven around the problems, it is very certain that the 
original principle of development which was implanted in the 
" primordial form " was perpetuated from one species to another, 
or the doctrine would contradict itself. The following illustra- 
tion, therefore, does not apply to the fundamental principle, but 
is simply an incident wholly unworthy of the hypothesis of de- 
velopment. It is taken from Sir Charles Lyell's u Antiquity 
of Man;" and Sir Charles conveys the impression that it em- 
braces the sum of the Darwinian doctrine. Nor is it, as we shall 
see, at all a representation of Lamarck's doctrine of the origin of 
Species. But it is well worthy of notice for its caricature of na- 
ture, and as showing what is meant by " natural selection " and 
"struggle for existence." (See Darwin's and Lamarck's hypoth- 
eses stated in Chapter VIII.) Thus says Charles Lyell — 

" Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck of 
the Giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched himself up 
in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until by continued 
efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained an elongated neck 

* Darwin's late work on the " Descent op Man" was published after this work 
was prepared for the press. See another note upon the "Descent of Man " in Chap- 
ter VIII. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 211 

[that is, added a large number of vertebrae to his neck]. Mr. 
Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply suppose that, in a season of 
scarcity, a long-necked variety, having the advantage in this re- 
spect over most of the herd, as being able to browse on foliage 
out of their reach, survived them, and transmitted its peculiarity 
of cervical conformation to its successors." 

In Darwin's case the long neck is supposed to be as much an 
accidental circumstance, however different may have been the 
causes, as in Lamarck's. It is false even to geological facts that 
other species of animals died out at the supposed era of the Gi- 
raffe ; otherwise he should have "stalked alone," in geological 
phrase, " the monarch of the earth." It is clear, therefore, that 
he has been no more perpetuated by " a season of scarcity " than 
all other animals, but very much after the manner of the present 
day. I may say, also, that the inquiry is naturally suggested, by 
the. foregoing statement, whether the long neck of the Swan was 
owing to the animal "stretching itself" in pursuit of food in 
deep water, or perpetuated, at the expense of other animals, by 
"a season of scarcity" on dry land, and whether its paddle-feet, 
and those of other aquatic birds, were brought about by efforts 
at swimming; and whether the long tails of the Monkey tribes 
be owing to their "longing" for means of support among the 
branches of trees, or to "a season of scarcity" upon the lower 
bushes, and particularly, also, how so many different species of 
that order of animals obtained their long tails, and why, accord- 
ing to Darwin's doctrine of inheritance, the long tail disappeared 
so abruptly in man ; nor should the inquiry be neglected, in this 
connection, as to the cause of the proboscis of the different spe- 
cies of Elephant and Mastodon. As to the tail and hair of the 
monkey tribes, Mr. Darwin must dispose of their disappearance 
in the human race consistently with the doctrine just stated; and 
it may be suggested for his consideration whether some one spe- 
cies as it approximated man in self-esteem did not regard these ap- 
pendages as deformities, and therefore through successive genera- 
tions amputated the tail and plucked out the hairs, until at last, 
through the doctrine of " Natural Selection," they disappeared in 
obedience to the law of inheritance. The beard was, of course, 
neglected ; and although the invention of the razor has been sup- 
posed to mark an era in the progress of civilization, I would 



212 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

farther suggest to the Darwinists whether the fact of its being 
now cast aside is not a proof, in their judgment, that the original 
hairy man retained his beard as an ornament to his features, 
while the same taste existed then as at present in relation to the 
female sex. 

It is also, according to Sir Charles Lyell, another special rec- 
ommendation of Darwin's hypothesis, that — " The theory of the 
origin of species by variation will also explain why a species 
which has once died out never reappears." — But is not this a 
very substantial proof of the Mosaic doctrine, that there has been 
but one Creation, and that by an Omnipotent Being ? 

We must not neglect, in the foregoing connection, the hypothe- 
sis of the distinguished Professor Carl Vogt, who, in a Memoir 
on " Microcephali," resorts to the expedient of imperfect develop- 
ments, or so-called " monsters," a lusus natures, as an argument to 
show the development of man out of the tribe of apes ; which is 
eminently worthy of the so-called " Modern Science." It should 
be also understood that none of the peculiarities of "monsters" 
— such as club-feet, small heads, idiocy, &c. — have been known, to 
be perpetuated. Organic nature is constituted upon a very dif- 
ferent plan than is here represented. But we will hear the Pro- 
fessor. Thus — 

"Microcephali and natural idiots present as perfect a series 
from man to the ape as can be desired ; and since it is possible 
that man, by arrest of development, may approximate the ape, 
the formative law must be the same for both ; and so we can not 
deny the possibility that just as man may, by arrest of develop- 
ment, sink down to the ape, so may the ape, by progressive de- 
velopment, approximate man." 

The fallacy of this reasoning will readily appear, not only from 
its violation of the assumed law of progressive development from 
the lowest to the highest, and thus laying the foundation for 
an hypothesis that would carry back the organic world to the 
" primordial form " and contradict itself, but from the fact that 
the malformation of the idiot's brain no more affects his condi- 
tion as a human being than the monster that is born without a 
brain, or with a club-foot; nor are any of these malformations of 
a constitutional or hereditary nature. On the other hand, the 
derivation of man from the monkey can not be disproved by the 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 213 

differences in the development of the brain, or in the conforma- 
tion of the skull, as attempted bj Figuier, in his Pre-historic 
Man, and other distinguished writers. Facts and principles of a 
far more fundamental nature must be arrayed in opposition. 
Darwin's developmental doctrine reaches as far back as some- 
thing like a primordial cell, and if a long series of brains, start- 
ing from that primordial form, can be progressively developed in 
an ascending order till it reaches the tribes of apes, we may not 
then pause over the lack of similitude between the brain of man 
and the monkey, and endeavor in this manner to defeat a doc- 
trine which has surmounted incomparably greater obstacles. 
Nay, more ; if any part of the developmental plan be accepted, 
then, by the irresistible analogy which is supplied by the coin- 
cidences of organization and functions, man must be included as 
an integral part of a systematic whole. And vice versa, if one 
animal was originally the direct work of Creative Power, so were 
all others. 

And now let us advance to the climax of absurdities that 
distinguish the developmental hypotheses — the complete antag- 
onism of that consistency in the forces and laws of nature upon 
which these hypotheses profess to be founded. When the plant 
or the animal had attained a state of maturity, by what invoked 
consistency of the laws of nature shall we explain the com- 
plete abandonment of her original plan of populating the globe 
(whether through the elements of matter or some "primordial 
form") for an universal sexual system throughout the animal 
and vegetable tribes ; and this especially at a time when all 
those convulsions had ceased which entombed races of animals 
in the rocks, and when inorganic nature had become so much 
more auspicious for the exercise of its " parturient faculty ?" ! ! 

There may be some among those who adopt the develop- 
mental schemes that are not disposed to abandon the Soul or its 
Immortality. But it will not be denied that the same philoso- 
phy must obtain here as in all the supposititious conclusions of 
a physical nature, and that it must be equally true that the Soul 
of man not only originated but became rational and immortal 
under the influence of those forces and laws of inorganic nature 
which are supposed to have given origin to his material body — 
whether it have been according to the doctrine which begins 



214 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

with the elements of matter, or that which starts with " blaste- 
ma," or a "cell," or some other "primordial form." As the first 
of these doctrines supposes that the elements of matter united 
into living beings in virtue of the properties with which they are 
endowed, by parity of reason, therefore, the immortal Soul must 
have had the same origin. If this absurdity be not admitted, 
then must the advocate of a Soul equally abandon the delusion 
of creative properties in the elements of matter. Or, if a truly 
Creative Power be invoked for the particular difficulty as to the 
Soul, so also the physical structure and its Life must fall under 
the same rule. There is no greater evidence of " vital proper- 
ties in the elements of matter" than of the Soul or Instinct. Or, 
if in any aspect of the developmental doctrines, Creative Power 
be allowed to have had any participation in the production of 
organic beings, there can be no compromise with the hypothesis 
of second causes as it respects other parts of the same beings. 
While the Creator was employed about the immortal Soul, it 
must be allowed that He would have consistently attended to the 
no less difficult organization. 

But, as I shall have shown by their advocates, all the schemes 
of development under the laws of inorganic nature necessarily 
exclude the Soul, and refer the manifestations of Reason to the 
physical structure. If there were, therefore, any foundation for 
the doctrines, these manifestations should be well pronounced in 
the advancing series of animals, out of which man is supposed to 
have been developed — as much so as, when starting with the ele- 
ments of matter, the Soul is supposed to be inherent in the ele- 
ments. And this would be equally true if man were allowed to 
be endowed with a Soul ; which, as in the former case, would 
carry us back through all the ascending series of animals till we 
reach the "primordial cell," or Darwin's "one primordial form;" 
for there alone can we look for the beginning of an immortal 
Soul. If such an Essence exist, and were not inherent in ele- 
ments of matter, or in the cell, or at least in some animal ante- 
rior to man, it must have been a supernatural endowment of the 
human race, or, in other words, a special Act of Creative Power, 
and therefore, also, by an irresistible logic, man's physical struc- 
ture was equally a direct act of the same Power. 

Some late Theological Writers maintain that man was created 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 215 

in the manner affirmed by Moses, but are willing to concede the 
animals to Mr. Darwin. We have seen, however, that they are 
on common ground as to the exigencies of a mature creation. 
If man or a single animal were created in a state of maturity, so 
also were all others ; or, on. the contrary, if a single animal came 
into being through the properties of matter, or was originally de- 
veloped from an ovum, a cell, or a blastema, the same, construc- 
tion, respectively, must apply to man and to all animals — espe- 
cially if a Personal Creator had any hand in the matter. The 
proof is irresistible, since it rests upon the coincidences in their 
organization and general and special functions, the elements of 
which they are composed and their relative proportions, their 
mode of procreation, and of sustaining their infant offspring, &c. 
The functions, also, of the human mind and of the instinct of 
animals, are in many respects so nearly alike, that many philoso- 
phers are of the opinion that they differ only in degrees. The 
evidences of Design are exactly the same in all. If man, there- 
fore, were created in a state of maturity, so also must have been 
his organic congener ; or, on the other hand, if animals grew up 
from the elements of matter, or from a germ, then certainly did 
the human race. Nature can not be disjointed in these funda- 
mental conditions. The same philosophy must be extended to 
all the inferior animals, where we meet with the same Unity of 
Design as in the superior races; for they have the same element- 
ary composition and the same essential functions ; and equally, 
also, for similar reasons, must all the vegetable tribes be em- 
braced under the same rule. 

Nor will I leave this important subject till I show the applica- 
tion of the foregoing facts to the so-called "typical plan" of de- 
velopment, and which will be seen to be as fatal to that as to the 
Darwinian assumptions.* 

* The principle involved in the "typical plan," or "system," or "types of crea- 
tion," is briefly this. Theoretical Geology maintains that organic life began with 
animals and plants of the most simple forms of structure ; that a type was then intro- 
duced which should serve as a foundation for the next in the series, and so on with 
the successive productions of animated beings throughout the long chain of ascend- 
ing analogies in organic structure till they reached the highest complexities in mam- 
malia and phenogamous plants ; that the simple forms flourished or "reigned" for a 
"long, indefinite period of time," when they were altogether extinguished, according 
to some, and not altogether, according to others; that "the earth was then remod- 
elled," or changed in its physical condition, so as to be better adapted to the next fol- 



216 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

The proof is coextensive with, all organic nature — displaying 
one grand Unity of Design all the way from the microscopic 
plant up to man. The typical hypothesis takes no cognizance 
of the fundamental plan of organization in its broad extent, but 
reposes upon the skeleton and external appendages, and certain 
differences in the form of organs between extinct and living ani- 
mals and. plants, but such only as now occur as distinguishing 
marks among existing species. The variety in the details of or- 
ganization does not affect in the least the unity of the grand prin- 
ciple upon which all the details are founded. There is but one 
pervading Design throughout all the individuals, from the lowest 
to the highest, that compose the animated kingdoms — that Unity 
of Design stretching from the lowest vegetable organism up to 
man. To appreciate this wonderful unity in the plan of organ- 
ization, instead of looking at the details, consider a single one of 
the general principles — that, for example, which constitutes the 
greatest final cause of all the vegetable tribes, the combination 
of the simple elements of matter into organic compounds. This, 
as we have seen, is the great function of every plant, however 
low or however high in the scale of organic life, and it assures 
us, without any knowledge of the details of structure, that it must 

lowing improvement upon the original " type," and which should serve as an advanc- 
ing type for the next series of improvements, though simultaneously with the new 
production the original ' ' type " was reproduced, either in the pre-existing species, or 
in others analogous to them; that this second production "reigned" for a long, in- 
definite time, then became extinguished, the earth again remodelled and better fitted 
for the next ascending link in the chain of organization ; and so on through numer- 
ous repetitions of the same processes, till the progress of improvements finally culmi- 
nated in man. 

The "typical system," therefore, is not the doctrine of transmutation of species, 
which forms the essential feature of Lamarck's doctrine ; nor of Darwinism, which is 
nearly akin to Lamarck's. Hugh Miller, in condemning the hypothesis of change 
of species from one to another, sets forth the true geological doctrine of the typical 
plan of spontaneity of being. Thus he says — 

"Bat while no hypothesis of development [by which he means transmutation of 
species] can neutralize or explain away the great geological fact that every true spe- 
cies had a beginning independently, apparently, of every preceding species, there was 
demonstrably a general progress from lower to higher forms." 

Sir Charles Lyell, as will be seen in our thirteenth chapter, was a thorough ad- 
vocate, in his Principles of Geology, of the origin of living beings in the forces of in- 
organic nature ; and such, indeed, was the doctrine of Theoretical Geolo^, in a gen- 
eral sense; though recently it has exchanged its "typical plan" for theTDarwinian 
"Origin of Species," as a more plausible variety of Pantheism. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 217 

be constituted upon a common plan throughout the vegetable 
world. Wonderful, indeed, that this immense proof of Unity of 
Design in the plan of organization should have escaped the un- 
derstanding of the human mind, and that all its details, in being 
parts of a common whole, must have been of simultaneous orgin, 
and that it was the work of an Omnipotent Mind. But you ask, 
perhaps, if there be any similar comprehensive proof of an unity 
of plan in the organization of the animal tribes, and especially, 
also, of the extension of that unity throughout the two animated 
kingdofns? The answer carries with it a force that must over- 
power even the atheist. Yes, I say, there is a proof exactly col- 
lateral with the foregoing, and while it establishes an identity of 
plan for animal organization, it equally shows that a common 
plan pervades the animal and vegetable tribes — namely, all ani- 
mals are ultimately dependent upon plants for their means of 
sustenance, and every animal, therefore, must possess an organi- 
zation qualified for an appropriation to its own uses of those or- 
ganic compounds which are generated by every plant; and there- 
fore the plan of organization must be the same in all animals, 
and specifically constituted for the assimilation to its own organ- 
ism of those compounds which are the work of the vegetable 
kingdom. A similar universal proof exists in the coincidence in 
the means for perpetuating the species in both organic kingdoms; 
while this very provision, also, declares a coincidence in all their 
organic functions, and therefore an unity of plan throughout or- 
ganic life. 

Thus, also, the whole plan of organization must have been al- 
ways precisely the same throughout every link of the vast chain, 
and the physical agents of life, therefore, always the same. 
Hence it follows that the whole typical system of Theoretical 
Geology — which is founded not upon differences in the plan of 
organization, but upon details in relation to organs — is one of the 
greatest fallacies that has crept into science. Nor, indeed, could 
this speculation have pervaded the works of Geologists, any more 
than the recent novelties of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, &c, had 
any one of the numerous projectors been duly informed in the 
science of Physiology. "Why else has it not occurred to such 
minds, in contemplating the inconceivable variety of designs that 
compose the organic kingdoms, and yet all constituted upon a 



218 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

common plan, and with a unity of purpose — why, I say, has not 
the very finding out of these designs, and the assurance of their 
existence as such, established the conviction that they must have 
been immediately and simultaneously brought into being by the 
creative energy of a Designing Intelligence ? 

Other considerations relative to the " typical plan," showing 
still farther its superficial nature, will be presented in the next 
following chapter, and, indeed, more or less throughout those 
which follow. But I will now submit the following, which, as 
well as the preceding demonstrations embraced in this Chapter, 
the reader should carry in mind as applicable to all the hypothe- 
ses which depart from the Mosaic doctrine of Creation. It is this : 
The substituted hypotheses suppose that the Laws of inorganic 
Nature brought forward, progressively, the animal and vegetable 
tribes from the lowest to the highest forms of organization, and 
even without a break in the regular chain. Now I say that this 
is exactly equivalent to a direct Personal act of the Creator ; for 
it supposes that a blind Law of Nature acted with precisely the 
same Intelligence "and forecast in having never deviated from 
that exact methodical plan — never brought forward a plant or 
an animal out of the thousands of species, except in its precise 
place in the graduated scale of organic life. Now which does the 
reader prefer, this supposed endowment of the destructive forces 
of Inorganic Nature, which I have variously shown to be sur- 
rounded with absurdities, or an Intelligent Being who was not only 
capable of carrying out the minutest details of the " typical plan," 
but, with a more becoming consistency, of creating simultaneously 
and in a state of maturity each department of Organic Nature? 

I shall have something also to say, in the next following chap- 
ter, upon the sexual system, but may now propose for the read- 
er's consideration whether he prefer, in the deliberate exercise of 
his reason, imputing the distinction of the sexes, the wonderful 
and complex organization which forms that distinction, and this 
substitution of generation for the forces of inorganic nature — 
whether, I say, he prefer an endowment of these forces with a 
sexual organizing Law to the direct fact that the Creator adopted 
a less "roundabout way," and one that should be consistent with 
all subsequent Laws, both of inorganic and organic nature, and 
at once " created them male and female ?" Which alternative is 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.— DARWINISM, ETC. 219 

most consistent with Creative Power while engaged in the imme- 
diate work of Creation ? 

Such, again, are the characteristic evidences of Unity of Design 
in all the Creator's plans ; and wherever they may fail in that 
principle they are the devices of man. What would have been 
the fate of the Narrative of Creation had it presented the de- 
formities of the " typical system," or of any doctrine of evolution 
under the laws of inorganic nature ! Who would have been so 
untrue to his own reason as to credit the statements ? On the 
contrary, they would have been ignominiously spurned by the 
very projectors of those doctrines ! The contrasts, therefore, be- 
tween the works of Creation and their distorted interpretations 
enlighten us at once upon the antagonism between Divine and 
human wisdom. This is apparent enough in the contrasts that 
relate to the origin of animated beings ; and when we come to 
the six days of Creation, where it is affirmed that the Life and 
Soul of man were as much direct acts of creation as the body, 
there will be found the same harmony in the progressive stages, 
the same undeviating unity of plan in all the details as witnessed 
in the plan of organic life, and the same evidences of a Sublime 
Intelligence as the Author of the whole, to be contrasted with 
the cosmogonies of human reason. 

I have had occasion to advert to many evidences of Design 
that expose the absurdities of Atheism, Pantheism, Spinozism, 
but none on such a scale of sublimity as those which I have in- 
troduced in the immediately preceding pages in demonstrating 
the absolute ignorance of the constitution and laws of organic 
beings which has assigned their origin in the elements of matter, 
or their development from a germ of unexplained origin, to the 
agencies of inorganic nature. 



220 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER VTIL 

THE FACTS AND ARGUMENTS IN BEHALF OF MATERIALISTIC DOC- 
TRINES CONTINUED. — REIGN OF LAW. — CREATIVE LAW.— 
DARWINISM. — LAMARCKISM. — SPINOZISM. — PANTHEISM. 

From what we have already seen of the application of the doc- 
trine of " Correlation or Equivalence and Conservation of Forces" 
to materialism as it respects the negation of a Soul, the reader 
must have inferred that it is also atheistical in its tendencies. 
Let us, in the first place, look at a simple corollary of the fore- 
going doctrine, and observe how atheism is positively implied, 
whether so intended or not. Thus Professor Grove, in his 
"Correlation of Physical Forces," educes from the doctrine an 
infinity of worlds. When endeavoring to show that no light is 
lost, but that a proportion is probably " converted into some 
other mode of motion," he says that— 

"It may be objected that this hypothesis assumes the stellar 
universe to be illimitable. If pushed to its extreme, so as to 
make the light of night equal that of day, provided no stellar 
light be lost, it does make this assumption ; but even this is a far 
more rational assumption to make than that the stellar universe 
is limited. Our experience gives no indication of a limit. We 
can not conceive a physical boundary, for then comes the ques- 
tion, what bounds the boundary ?" Sir Isaac Newton antici- 
pated the answer. Looking upon worlds as limited, he deduces 
a cogent proof of the existence of an Almighty Power; for,«says 
he — " The outside would gravitate towards the middlemost without a 
Divine Power to conserve it? Our Author goes on — "And to 
suppose the stellar Universe to be bounded by innnite space or 
by infinite chaos ; that is to say, to suppose a spot — for it would 
then become so — of matter in definite forms, with definite forces, 
and probably teeming with definite organic beings, plunged in a 
universe of nothing, is, to my mind at least, far more unphilo- 
sophical than to suppose a boundless universe of matter existing in 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW —PANTHEISM. 221 

forms and actions analogous to those which, as far as our exami- 
nation goes, pervade space." 

If such, then, be the case, the universe is self-existent ; or, on 
the other hand, if the work of an Omnipotent, Creative Power, 
that Power could have no limit to its exercise ; and since space 
is illimitable, such a Power should be able to create worlds 
throughout eternity. Should He render them infinite, His 
Power will then come to an end ; which is contradictory of In- 
finite Power, and therefore the hypothesis of an infinity of 
worlds excludes a Creator. Moreover, as the organic beings of 
this earth had a beginning, and inferentially, therefore, of all oth- 
er inhabited orbs, it follows not only analogically that the orbs 
themselves had a beginning, but especially so as they were de- 
signed for the abode of created beings. We may also well follow 
a guide so absorbed with the theory of Gravitation as Sir Isaac 
Newton, when he surrenders the all-pervading force, and yields 
the ultimate conservation of worlds to the immediate agency of 
that Being of whom alone infinity can be predicated. 

That the doctrine of the "Correlation and Conservation of 
Forces " not only lies at the foundation of Vital and Mental Ma- 
terialism as at present advocated, but that its tendency is atheist- 
ical, is more than sustained by many scientific minds — nay, is un- 
equivocally avowed. Here, also, as with the immediate subject 
of this work, it is important that our authorities should speak for 
themselves, as one of the best means of confuting their error and 
as farther illustrative of their premises in behalf of mental ma- 
terialism. As examples of this effort recently made upon the 
basis of the " New Philosophy " of Correlation and Conservation of 
Forces, and of its extensive prevalence, I shall introduce the writ- 
ings of some of its most distinguished advocates. Let us then 
first refer to one of the principal sources of the " New Philoso- 
phy," in a work on " Force and Matter" which has been already 
before us (Chapter VI.), by Dr. Louis Buchner, President of 
the Medical Association of Hesse-Darmstadt, 9th edition, Leipsic, 
1867. I may say, also, that such is its popularity in England 
it has been honored in a short time with many editions by the 
London Press. 

The distinguished Author supplies a very good, apprehension 
of the objects of his work, and of the manner in which it has in- 



222 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

spired other eminent Writers, and of what we are to expect from 
this " New Philosophy," in a letter to the English editor (1863) 
connected with the work, and from which I make the following 
extracts : 

"It is just the works of eminent Englishmen which have, 
within the last few years, given an unhoped for support to my 
mode of viewing natural phenomena, so that we may expect a refor- 
mation of the greater part of the hitherto prevalent theories 
about nature and the World." " I could not know (nine years 
ago) that the dogmata concerning the non-existence of spontaneous 
generation, and the immutability of Species, which were then con- 
sidered almost too sacred for attack, would soon experience such 
severe shocks, and that the celebrated theory of Darwin would 
reduce the whole Organic World, past and present, to one great 
fundamental conception ; I could not know that the necessary sci- 
entific basis [!] for either of these theories, or the cellular theory, 
would, within the same time, receive such a development as to 
be applicable both to the animal and to the vegetable world ; I 
could not know that any assertion as regards the slow evolution of 
man, from AN animal form to his actual condition, would thus 
become conceivable ; I could not foresee that my opinion in rela- 
tion to the silly theory of vital force would be well supported. In- 
finitely slow has been the evolution of the human mind from its prim- 
itive state. Well does your learned countryman, Professor Hux- 
ley, liken the Mental Development of humanity to the meta- 
morphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly by the periodical cast- 
ings of its shin. 11 " This nature is not a chaos of incomprehensible, 
lawless forces, but a connected whole, subject to eternal laws in a 
constant state of progressive development, so that in a lapse of time 
the most stupendous effects are produced by apparently insignificant 
causes ; and farther, that the universe, the suns and planets, the 
luonderful organisms, and even the human mind in its grandest 
manifestations, are composed of and produced by the same ma- 
terials and forces. This is a stand-point which, in magnitude 
and sublimity, yields to no other." " There can scarcely be a 
more ideal conception than the unity of all physical and men- 
tal existence in the same fundamental laws and causes." 

Notwithstanding the disposition of the advocates of the doc- 
trines before us to assemble them under the general designation 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW— PANTHEISM. 223 

of the u New Philosophy," it would appear from the great Lead- 
er that they are an old affair, derived from the Heathen of an- 
cient nations. In the Preface to his first edition of Force and 
Matter, Btichner says — 

" We do not boast of having produced any thing new. Simi- 
lar ideas have been promulgated at all times, partly by old Greek 
and Indian Philosophers ; but the necessary empirical basis fur- 
nished by modern science was wanting." Again—" The Greeks, 
who excelled us in many respects, knew only of departed shades; 
and among the Romans the belief in immortality was very 
faint." 

As the foregoing is an act of injustice to the real Philosophers 
of. ancient times, and is sinister in its purposes, I shall ultimately 
bring forward the principal Master Minds of those ages for their 
own defense against such imputations; and thus, also, contrast 
them with the Free-thinkers of the Nineteenth Century, and for 
the benefit of those who are "halting between two opinions." 

Let us now inquire as to who those "Greek and Indian Philos- 
ophers " were that have transmitted to us the materialism and the 
atheism of the "New Philosophy." There is the ■ old heathen 
Heraclitus, who flourished five hundred years before our Sav- 
iour. He was the principal "Free-thinker" of that age. He 
avoided his fellow-men, and led a solitary life in the mountains; 
and hence was surnamed the Obscure. He wrote an unintelli- 
gible work on the Nature of Things. This work was finally lost ; 
but there remains the following fragment : 

" This Universe, containing all that exists, has been created 
neither by God nor by man ; but has always existed, and will 
ever remain a vivifying fire, being kindled and extinguished ac- 
cording to definite laws." 

There is the " New Philosophy " in ipsissimis verbis, in its very 
words ; and the Author before us rejoices in that fragment, and 
even makes it the motto to the first chapter of his work. Never- 
theless, as to organic beings, Dr. Buchner bestows a high com- 
mendation upon the materialistic doctrine of the organizing pow- 
ers of "carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen," as forming "the 
empirical basis furnished by modern science." 

Our Author, in replying to his Critics in a Preface to the third 
edition of his work, exposes his ignorance of Physiology and 



224 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Natural Science, and avows his atheism in the following manner; 
which is a good exemplification of the nature of his "facts" and 
of his method of reasoning. Thus — 

" Our Critic believes that it is incogitable or impossible that 
the mechanical, physical, or chemical forces should have formed 
an eye. We might ask him, if not these, what else? Yital force 
can not be appealed to ; that is scientifically dead. The Critic can 
only reply — L Self -consciousness* all-penetrating divinity has* formed 
it.' We reply with a second question — What has formed that 
God ? Answer — ' He has either formed himself, or he is eternal.' 
But if so perfect a being like God has created itself why should not 
so imperfect a being as the world, an organism, an eye, have been 
formed by its own forces? But if God is called eternal, the world 
is also eternal, and this excludes the idea of a casual principle, or 
renders it unnecessary. Therefore, quod erat demonstrandum 
— nature, with its mechanical, chemical, and physical forces, is 
the producer of the organisms. The search of Philosophers after 
a first cause is like ascending an endless ladder." 

Our Author also produces the authority of Czolbe to prove 
that matter has always existed, and is eternal. The reader will 
observe that the proof consists in maris inability to create matter 
or to annihilate it. It will be also observed how the question 
as to matter is involved with the negation of matter or space. 
Thus— 

" Not merely are experimental reasons wanting for the proof 
that matter and space have been created, or can be destroyed, but 
we can not conceive such an idea. Matter and space must, there- 
fore, be considered eternal" 

Such, and as will be farther seen, is the general nature of our 
Author's facts, and such are the best examples of his logical in- 
ductions — which, indeed, is avowed by his triumphant "quod erat 
demonstrandum;" and it is such that have placed him at the head 
of the school of the "New Philosophy." Doubtless, however, the 
zeal with which he enforces its doctrines and the frankness of his 
atheism will render his admirers more cautious in their homage. 
However distasteful these quotations may be to some readers, 
and others that I shall have made from other authors, they are 
demanded by our subject, while also the reader will have exten- 
sively before him the shallow ground upon which reposes the 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 225 

whole fabric of "scientific" infidelity — a basis of the most ab- 
surd assumptions. 

Notwithstanding our Author introduces his first Preface with 
an ad captandum Motto from Boz — "Now -what I want is facts " — 
I affirm that there can not be produced one substantiated " fact " 
in proof even of the possible origin of living beings through the 
operation of natural forces upon inorganic matter ; and I shall 
have shown, also, the impossibility of the origin of species in any 
other manner than as direct acts of Creative Power. And I say, 
moreover, that not a " fact" can be presented in disproof of either 
a Soul or a Creator. I shall have considered, indeed, every so- 
called "fact" that has been yet submitted in behalf of either of 
the questions under consideration ; and if this position be not 
advisedly taken, let its Author be confronted by the production 
of the fact. On the contrary, I reiterate, that every fact having 
any bearing upon the questions — and there are thousands of 
them — declares the existence of an organizing Principle of Life 
distinct from the physical forces of matter, and a substantive, self- 
acting Soul, and, above all, every fact relating to man and ani- 
mals proclaims their origin, in a mature condition, in a Design- 
ing, Omnipotent Creator. 

But we will hear our author still farther upon the subject of a 
Yital Force, as it is a fundamental point with the Materialist to 
confound the perishable Principle of Life with the imperishable 
forces of inorganic nature; and I also renew some quotations 
upon this subject, that no doubt shall exist that the violent rejec- 
tion of a Yital Force is the fundamental ground for rejecting the 
Soul (or the " new materialism"), and of the spontaneity of liv- 
ing beings. Starting with the assumption that the Principle of 
Life is nothing but a force of inorganic matter, the assumption is 
carried analogically to the Soul ; and then, after trampling upon 
the endless phenomena which attest their existence, the w r hole 
domain of Nature is thrust aside as equally wanting in proof of a 
Creative Power, and the analogy is thus made to subserve the 
assumption of the self-existence of all things. Let us hear : 

"That the World kas not originated" says Biichner, "the 
DENIERS OF YlTAL FORCE ARE VERY MUCH AGREED IN. As to 
the HOW life originated, nothing hut presumptions and hypotheses 
can be offered ; but these hypotheses ALL AGREE that this origin 

15 



226 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

proceeded from natural laws and forces inherent in the things 
themselves, and determined by external nature." Other writers 
will soon be quoted to the same effect. 

Biichner informs us circumstantially, in his chapter on Prime- 
val Generation, as to the period of time when plants and animals 
underwent the organizing action of the properties and forces of 
matter. For example — " with the appearance of water, and as 
soon as the temperature permitted it, organic life developed, itself f 
in which he agrees with Professor Tiedemann and others (p. 176). 

The following quotation from our Author shows the bold as- 
surance with which "Science" is invoked and misrepresented in 
this conflict with God and nature : . . " . • . 

" The facts of Science," says Biichner, "prove, with consid- 
erable certainty, that the organic beings which people, this . earth, 
owe their origin and propagation solely to the conjoined ac- 
tion of natural forces and materials ; and that the gradual change 
and development of the surface of the earth is the sole, or at least the 
chief cause of the gradual increase of the living world." 

Now Science rests entirely upon facts that have been observed by. 
man, and the reader, therefore, will see how completely our Au- 
thor overthrows not only the foregoing statements, but his entire 
work, by the following admission made in another place, where 
he was " nodding." Here it is : 

Speaking of the varieties of a common species (the dog), lie 
goes on thus — "It is certain that no permanent transmutation of. 
one species of animals into another has yet been observed y.nor 
that any of the higher organisms was produced by the union, of -in- 
organic substances and forces without a previously existing germ 
produced by homogeneous parents. There must have existed 
individuals of the same species to produce others of the same IdndP 

Where, then, under this crushing blow of Science, inflicted by 
one of its principal adversaries — where, I say, are all the de- 
formities which consist of the " organizing elements of matter," 
as generally taught by the materialistic school, or of Tiedemann's 
"primitive organic matter macerating in water;" of Darwin's 
"primordial form" and its development into all living beings; 
of the "infinitely slow evolution of the human mind;" and all 
other corresponding doctrines? And how well is our Author 
here entitled to the reproof which he administers to Professor 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 227 

Lotze of Gottingen, for a trifling contradiction of himself — 
"That a writer," he says, "looked upon as an authority, should 
pronounce in one breath two such contradictory sentences, 
proves how unsubstantial our present philosophy is." 

Let us now recur to a comparison which our author, and oth- 
ers of his school, have made between the living organism and a 
steam-engine, for the purpose intimated when I was speaking of 
Professor Tyndall's comparison of the force which moves a 
clock with that of organic beings, and other similar expedients 
(r#160). The assumed analogy between them appears to have 
originated with Baron Liebig-, who says, in his Animal Chemistry, 
that— "The self- regulating steam-engines furnish no unapt image 
of what occurs in the animal body." " The body, in regara to 
the production of heat and force, acts just like one of these ma- 
chines" Many writers have seized upon this "image," and 
Biichner endows it with life — 

"The steam-engine," he says, "is, in a certain sense, endowed 
with life, and possesses, as the result of a peculiar combination 
of force-endowed materials, a united effect which we use for our 
purposes, without, however, being able to see, smell, or touch 
the effect itself." And again, in another place — " The circula- 
tion of the blood is clearly mechanical, and the anatomical appa- 
ratus by which it is effected perfectly resembles that made by 
the hand of man. The heart has its valves, like a steam-engine, 
and their closure produces audible sounds," &c. And again, for 
the third time, he returns to this favorite comparison of the ma- 
terialistic writers; and I thus also afford them a full opportunity 
of displaying the best of their " facts," the best of their logic, and 
the best of their much-boasted " science." Thus, again, Biichner 
— " Does not the locomotive engine, as it rushes along, appear 
to us as a living- being endowed with intelligence? Do 
not the Poets speak of a steam-horse — a fire-horse? It is 
the peculiar combination of matter and force which imbues us 
involuntarily with the idea that there is life in the engine" And 
from this nonsense he immediately infers, like the rest of the 
school — " The possibility of the PRODUCTION of mwt> from mate- 
rial combinations. Thought, spirit, soul, are not a substance, but 
the effect of the conjoined action of many materials with forces or qual- 
ities." 



228 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

As well might a comparison be made between the mechanism 
of the heavens and their forces and those of Organic Beings, as 
between the Organic Being and steam-engines, clocks, &c., for 
the purpose of proving in either case that they are subject to the 
same forces and laws. We know that the only analogy between 
the inorganic and organic mechanism consists in evidences of 
design. 

Here, then, is an opportunity for completely establishing the 
doctrines of materialism and atheism, or for their complete refu- 
tation ; and I therefore propose the fair alternative, to wit-^if 
any of the advocates of the origin of living beings in the forces 
of inorganic matter will show us that these forces can produce a 
steam-engine, or any thing so simple as one of its valves, they 
may be assured that all Vitalists, all Spiritualists, all Theists, will 
at once espouse their cause. And so, on the other hand, if our 
opponents can not thus confront us, they will be expected to ac- 
knowledge their sophistry and error. 

But so long as it continues to be admitted that the steam-en- 
gine is necessarily " the work of the hand of man guided by his 
Eeason," it will certainly follow that the contrivance of man, his 
Vital Force, his Intellectual Faculties, were equally the work of 
an Infinitely greater Designing Intelligence. And farther: con- 
sidering the corresponding manifestations of Design between man 
and the steam-engine (mental design being admitted in the latter), 
the conclusion is irresistible, and sanctioned by the premises of 
our opponents, that the Mind of man is similar to that of his 
Maker. This ground being attained, it will not be doubted that 
the Contriver and Maker of the organic mechanism could have 
equally, and with great consistency, have endowed the mechan- 
ism, so different from all things in the inorganic world, with an 
appropriate Force of Life, and a Principle of Intelligence, a sub- 
stantive, designing, self-acting Agent analogous to His own — -just as 
easily, at least, as the designer and maker of the steam-engine 
provided the machine with "valves." 

The simile of the steam-engine, however, will be abandoned 
hereafter ; for very recently (1869) Professor Fabeb, of Ham- 
burg, has actually made a man, who "utters words, answers 
questions, and even enunciates simple sentences." It is not 
onty anatomically exact, but as Biichner surmises only of the 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW. —PANTHEISM. 229 

'steam-engine, is actually a "living being" endowed with intelli- 
gence. This is expected to settle the question as to reasoning 
from the designs of man to a Creator by whom man was designed. 

I shall now turn our attention to the doctrine of the "Keign 
of Law," as designated by those who embrace the natural and 
the supernatural under a common philosophy. It is a happy 
phraseology, and admits of much ambiguity of discussion. It 
has engaged the attention of writers of eminent ability; but as it 
is only an extension of the usual materialistic rationale hitherto 
considered, whatever its greater plausibility and less repulsive 
features, it may be everywhere met by the facts and arguments 
already alleged against its various phases. I shall begin the flis- 
cussion of this specific question by affording it the important ad- 
vantage of favorable opinions derived from eminent Theologians, 
as the most satisfactory mode of conducting the subject. The 
doctrine is thus expressed by Eev. J. Tulloch when speaking 
of Miracles : 

"The stoutest advocate of interference can mean nothing more 
than that the Supreme Will has so moved the hidden springs of 
nature that a new issue arises on given circumstances." 

That will do for events which are not in clear independence 
of Divine Power, such as are usually recognized as Providential 
dispensations. But there were miracles wrought by our Lord, 
and at other times, which admit of no such interpretation. They 
must be abandoned as myths if they are to be at all submitted to 
the test of natural laws. Our learned Author, indeed, would 
almost reason us into the conclusion that there is no other God 
than nature. "The idea of law," he says, " is so far from being 
contravened by the Christian miracles, that it is taken up by 
them and made their very basis." The former part of the affirma- 
tion is strictly true, the latter as strictly untrue. " The mira- 
cles," he continues, " are the expressions of a higher Law, working 
out its wise ends among the lower and ordinary sequences of 
life and history. Those ordinary sequences (miracles) represent 
nature, however, not as an immutable fate, but a plastic medium 
through which a Higher Voice and Will are ever addressing us, 
and which, therefore, may be wrought into new issues when the 
Voice has a new message and the Will a special purpose for 
us." — Beginning Life, &c. 



230 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

It is certainly true that miracles sometimes imitate natural ' 
events, as in the miraculous hail, when the instrumentality of 
natural laws may be employed ; but in all the cases there is as 
much a direct and manifest exercise of Creative Energy. In 
most of the miracles, however, we witness nothing of the "ordi- 
nary sequences of nature." What analogy is there, for example, 
between the resurrection of Lazarus, the conversion of water into 
wine, the miracles of the loaves and fishes, &c, and any of the 
sequences of the laws of nature ; or with what reason can it be 
said that "the idea of law is made the very basis" of such mira- 
cles? The statements above refute the assumption. The doc- 
trirfe inculcated by Tulloch in the foregoing extract is virtually 
the dogma of the Correlation or Equivalence of Forces, which 
recognizes no other Will, Intelligence, and Creative Power, as I 
have already variously shown, than what emanates from matter. 
"Plastic nature" therefore, means simply creative nature, whose 
God consists of the forces wherewith it is endowed. 

The Kev. J. Pye Smith, in his work on Geology, introduces 
the authority of the Eev. Professor Sedgwick, as follows : 

" The Eev. Professor Sedgwick has favored me with commu- 
nications on this vital point (perpetual change of plants and ani- 
mals), and with permission to use them as I might think fit. 
Among his remarks the Professor says — 'The fossils demon- 
strate the time to be long, though we can not say how long.' 
{ Every thing indicates a very long and very slow progression 
— one creation flourishing and performing its part, and gradually 
dying off as it has so performed its part; and another actual crea- 
tion of new beings, NOT derived AS progeny from the former, 
gradually taking its place; and again this new creation succeed- 
ed by a third. Nothing per saltum; all according to Law and 
order; all bearing the impress of Mind, a great dominant ivill, at 
the bidding of which all parts of nature have their peculiar move- 
ments, their periods of revolution, their rise and fall.' " 

Another late and distinguished writer, the Duke of Argyll, 
on the u Reign of Law" presents the subject in an elaborate man- 
ner. The work involves all the questions which will have come 
before us of a materialistic nature, and more than any other is in- 
tended to elucidate their philosophy. It is truly a representative 
work, and must, therefore, receive a critical attention before ad- 



EEIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 231 

vancing farther to thoSB Authors who have built up creation 
upon the same foundation. Moreover, the discussion will have 
so far covered the ground that the necessity for criticism upon 
the writings of others of the same school, to which I shall refer, 
will be greatly superseded. Their premises and conclusions be- 
ing presented, can be readily brought to the test of what I am 
about to say and have said already. Whatever may have been 
our Author's intentions, his work is apparently an attempt to 
render materialism and pantheism acceptable; and the task is 
executed with an ability and plausibility much surpassing any 
similar effort. I approach it, therefore, with no little diffidence, 
and as a necessary part of my undertaking. Numerous quota- 
tions will be made, not only for the reader's information and in 
full justice to the Author, but as supplying one of the best op- 
portunities for a comparison of facts and arguments upon im- 
portant questions. I begin with the modus operandi of Creative 
Power. Thus our Author — 

"There is 'nothing in Religion incompatible with the belief 
that all exercise of God's power, whether ordinary or extraordina- 
ry, is effected through the instrumentality of means — that is to 
say, by the instrumentality of natural laws brought out, as it 
were, and used for a Divine purpose. To believe in the exist- 
ence of miracles we must, indeed, believe in the SiArhuman and 
in the Supernatural. But both these are familiar facts in nature. 
We must believe, also, in a Supreme Will and a Supreme Intel- 
ligence; but this our own Wills and our own Intelligence not 
only enable us to conceive of, but compel us to recognize in the 
ivhole laws and economy of nature.' 1 '' 

The foregoing is presented with much ingenuity, since it is 
virtually a reduction of miracles to the ordinary laws and econ- 
omy of nature. What is meant by " Supreme Will and Su- 
preme Intelligence " in this connection will be explained by our 
Author himself in subsequent quotations. 

I have said that* I. Guizot, in LEglise et la Societe Chretienne 
(1861), has employed the argument set forth by myself in my 
work on the Soul and Instinctive Principle, in 1848, and again 
in my work on Theoretical Geology, in 1856 (which were then 
widely distributed in Europe), to the effect that man must have 
been created in a state of maturity b6th of body and mind ; and 



I 

232 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL 4ND INSTINCT. 

which I extended, at the same time, to aft mammiferous animals, 
and all birds whose young are at first incapable of flight. The 
argument in relation to man, as briefly stated by M. Guizot, is 
bravely evaded by the Duke of Argyll by the assumption of , 
" many successive creations in the history of our Planet," accord- 
ing to the Eeign of Law. Thus the Duke, after referring to 
Guizot's opinion — 

" This is not a very safe argument. If the Supernatural — that 
is to say, the Superhuman and the supermaterial — can not be found 
nearer to us than this, IT will not be securely found at all. It is very 
difficult to free ourselves from the notion that, by going far enough 
back, we can l find out God 1 in some sense in which we can not 
find him now. The certainty not merely of one, but of many suc- 
cessive Creations in the history of our Planet, and especially of a 
time comparatively recent, ivhen man did not exist, is indeed an 
effectual answer to this notion, if it be now ever entertained, of ' all 
things having continued as they are since the Beginning ' ■ (2 Peter, 
ch. iii., v. 4). But those who believe that the existing processes 
of nature can be accounted for by 'Law' may as reasonably be- 
lieve that those processes were COMMENCED by the same vague and 
mysterious agency." 

Here we have the assumption which is equivalent to saying 
that, as ther^have been many successive beginnings and ex' 
tinctions of living beings upon our Planet under the " Eeign of 
Law," and they came forward in very immature conditions, 
therefore this is " an effectual answer " to the argument that man 
was created in a state of maturity. Since, however, our Author 
thought proper to introduce the incontrovertible proof that man 
was, from the very necessities of the case, created in a state of ma- 
turity both of body and mind (see Chap. VII.), it was incumbent 
upon him, in deference to the argument and its object, to have 
treated it with something better than contempt. The affirma- 
tion that, " If the Supernatural — that is to my, the Superhuman 
and the supermaterial — can not be found nearerio us than this, IT will 
not be securely found at all," is equivalent to saying, in view of 
the demonstrative fact, that we may abandon all other efforts at 
"looking through nature up to nature's God," and repose all our 
faith and our hopes in the sensible objects around us. Our Au- 
thor's disposal of the subject in the foregoing manner is too mo- 



I 



KEIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 233 

mentous to admit of a silence on the part of its original pro- 
pounder that might be regarded as an acquiescence ; and many 
might consider the sophistry unanswerable, and a final disposal 
of the great questions between the Spiritualist and the Material- 
ist, the Theist and the Pantheist. And what can be more defi- 
ant of facts, or a more direct delegation of the origin of organic 
beings to the forces of inorganic nature, than the following as- 
sumption that such beings are still undergoing creation? 

" The work of creation has been and is being carried on under 
rides of adherence to typical forms, and under limits of variation 
from them," &c. And again — " The close and mysterious rela- 
tions between the mere animal frame of man and that of the 
lower animals does render the idea of a common relationship, by 
descent at least, conceivable. Indeed, in proportion as it seems to 
approach nearer to processes of which we have some knowledge, 
it is, in a degree, more conceivable than Creation without any 
process — of which we have NO KNOWLEDGE, and can have NO CON- 
CEPTION. BUT WHATEVER MAY HAVE BEEN THE METHOD OR 

process of Creation, it is creation still. If it were proved 
to-morrow that the first man was 'born' from some pre-existing 
Form of Life, it would still be true that such a birth must have 
been, in every sense of the word, a new Creation. It would still be 
as true that God formed him ' out of the dust of the earth,' as it 
is true that he has so formed every child who is now called to 
answer the first question of the theologians. [Mere sophistry.] 
And we must remember that the language of Scripture nowhere 
draws, or seems conscious of, the distinction which modern philoso- 
phy draws so sharply between the Natural and the Supernat- 
ural " — which is simply a misrepresentation of the Narrative of 
Creation. 

And, again, our Author confounds in a similar manner the 
original creation of living beings out of the elements of matter 
with their perpetuation by means of the sexes. Thus — " Out of 
the dust of the ground, that is, out of the ordinary elements of 
matter, was that body formed which is still upheld and perpetu- 
ate!! by organic forces acting under the rules of law." Nothing 
truer; but our Author continues — "On this subject M. GuizoT 
lays great stress, as many others do, on what he calls the Super- 
natural in Creation as distinguished from the operations now visi- 



234 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ble in nature.'''' And still again — " The truth is, there is no such dis- 
tinction between what we find in nature and what we are called 
upon to believe in Religion, as that which men pretend to draw 
between the Natural and the Supernatural. It is a distinction 
purely artificial, arbitrary, and unreal." 

The foregoing quotations are derived from our Author's intro- 
ductory chapter on the "Supernatural," which appear to be in- 
tended as a basis for the subsequent part of the work which 
treats of the "Eeign of Law." What that "Reign" is, the read- 
er can well imagine — more distinguished for sophistry than the 
logic of facts. Indeed we look almost'in vain for the semblance 
of facts ; and surely what we have thus foreseen of our Author 
consists of assumptions that strike at the foundations of nature, 
as I have already presented them in their absolute and indisputa- 
ble realities, and which I shall continue to substantiate by other 
irrefutable proofs. And yet, as I have said, this work of our 
Author is so constructed that it occupies the first rank among its 
competitors. 

"'Tis time, however, if the case stands thus, 
For us plain folks, and all who side with us, 
To build our altar confident and bold." 

But we will hear the Duke yet farther, who carries the fore- 
going principles into the laws of nature, investing the laws with 
that Will and Intelligence which belong to their Author. This 
is the doctrine of the Pantheist. He has here no alternative. 
He must speak of mind, reason, intelligence, will, affections, &c, 
in the language which common usage has adopted, or he would 
not be intelligible or obtain a hearing. "It belongs," as our 
Author would say, " to the profound but unconscious metaphys- 
ics of human speech." He therefore assigns those Divine attri- 
butes to the laws of nature ; and nature, in a collective sense, is 
the god of pantheism. In the same way, and for the same rea- 
son, the operations of the Soul are expressed in Materialism after 
the manner of the Spiritualist ; and when Life is the subject of 
consideration by the same school, by which nothing more is 
meant than "correlated heat," the phraseology is that of the»vi- 
talist — vital force or a plastic force being the usual verbal me- 
dium through which the writer makes himself intelligible. The 
treatment of the subject has often an air of plausibility, and when 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 235 

presented with scientific pretensions it is fruitful of victims. Let 
us hear our Author, the Duke. Thus — 

" The very idea and essence of a machine -is that it is a con- 
trivance for the distribution of force with a view to its bearing 
on special purposes. A man's arm is a machine in which the 
law of leverage is supplied to the vital force for the purpose of 
prehension. Anatomy supplies an infinite number of similar 
examples. It is impossible to describe or explain the facts we 
meet with in this or in any other branch of science without in- 
vesting the laws of nature with something of that personality 
which they do actually reflect, or without conceiving of them 
AS partaking of those attributes of mind which we every- 
where recognize in their workings and results." "Sir John 
Herschel has not hesitated to say — ' That it is but reasonable 
to regard the Force of gravitation as the direct or indirect result 
of a CoNSCiousNESS^pr a Will existing somewhere.' And even if 
we can not certainly identify Force in all its forms with the di- 
rect energies of One omnipresent and all-pervading Will, it is at 
least in the highest degree unphilosophical to assume the contra- 
ry.' 4 " It is perfectly true that the mind does recognize in nature 
a reflection of itself. But if this be a deception, it is a deception 
which can not be avoided by transferring the idea of Personality to 
the abstract idea of Force." 

What has been just stated of Sir John Herschel is affirmed in 
the same manner of the Vital Force by the distinguished Dr. 
Prichard. Thus— "We may, if we choose to do so, term the 
cause which governs the organization and vital existence a plas- 
tic principle; but it is a principle endowed with intelligence and 
design." And what but the Will of nature can be meant by our 
Author, the Duke, in the following speculation upon the Corre- 
lation or Equivalence of Forces ? — " It may be," he says, " that 
all natural forces are resolvable into some one force, and indeed, in 
the modern doctrine of Correlation of Forces, an idea which is a 
near approach to this has already entered the domain of Science. 
It may also be that this one force, into which all others return 
again, is itself a mode of action of the Divine Will." Nor has " Sir 
John Herschel hesitated to say" that — " Organic nature is the 
mystery of mysteries ;" nor has our Author "hesitated to say" 
that — "It is the completeness of the analogy between our own 



236 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

works on a small scale and the works of the Creator on an in- 
finitely large scale, which is the greatest mystery of all." Grant 
a Personal God for the latter, where, then, is the "mystery" in 
either case ? And associated with that " complete analogy," 
here is another obvious truth from our Author which should im- 
pel us at once to look through the designs of Eeason to a Higher 
Intelligence as the Architect of nature — "All our machines are 
simply contrivances for bringing natural forces into operation ; 
and these machines themselves we are able to construct only 
out of the materials and by the application €)f the laws of 
nature." 

Our Author's work, like Darwin's on the "Orchids," abounds 
with evidences of Design in nature. As to the Laws of inor- 
ganic nature, and as their operation is expounded by our Author, 
no one acquainted with them entertains a doubt, excepting in 
respect to their imputed creative endowment 

Our Author; however, certainly knows nothing of the laws of 
organic beings, but regards the successive geological creations as 
established. The mechanism of flying, of which he gives us 
many examples, and all analogous phenomena which are relative 
to the acts of volition and the senses, have nothing to do with 
the Laws of Life, however much, as they wonderfully are, sig- 
nificant of an Almighty Designer — Something beyond nature itself 
To appreciate in the least the laws of life, we must penetrate the 
profound labyrinth of the real organs of life, and there we shall 
find, also, what our Author and Theoretical Geology labor to 
prove by the skeleton and its external appendages, that not only 
the whole animal kingdom, but the vegetable also, are consti- 
tuted upon one plan of organization, functions, and laws. Theo- 
retical Geology, like our Author, takes no account of those nu- 
merous tribes of animals which bave no skeleton and often no 
external appendages, and where the unity in the general plan of 
organization can be detected only in the fundamental laws of 
life — as, for example, in the polypi; but it lays its foundation of 
unity of plan upon what is merely superadded in animals to the 
organic mechanism, and this for the special purpose of rearing 
up its hypothesis of a " typical plan," or an ascending series of 
so-called creations according to the immutable laws of nature. 
After an extended, able, and instructive account of the mechan- 



REIGN OF LAW.— CKEATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 237 

ism of flying, swimming, plumage, &c, our Author generalizes 
the whole after the manner of Theoretical Geology. Thus — 

"On this plan ['an universal plan'] the bony skeletons of all 
living animals have been put together [excepting such as have 
none]. The forces which have been combined for moulding the 
organic forms have been so combined as to mould them after cer- 
tain types or patterns. And when comparative anatomy has re- 
vealed this as affecting all the animals of the existing world, an- 
other branch of the same science comes in to conform the gener- 
alization and extend it over the innumerable creatures which 
have existed and passed away. This one plan of organic life 
has never been departed from since Time began." 

But it is all relative to the animal or non-essential appendages 
of organic life, whose plan only follows upon the immensely 
greater and universal plan of the essential organs. (See "Typ- 
ical Plan," p. 215.) And then our Author, after the manner of 
the disciples of nature, informs us how the universal typical sys- 
tem has been accomplished; and this he does in a chapter whose 
very title is intended to convey its whole import — that is, " Cre- 
ation by Law." Thus — 

"It appears that creative purpose has been effected through 
the instrumentality of Forces so combined as to arrange the 
particles OF matter in definite forms — which is simply nature's 
1 creative purpose.' " (See Chap. VII.) Again — "Each new crea- 
tion seems to have been a new application of the old materials; each 
new house of life has been built on these new foundations." "Cre- 
ation has not been a single act, but a long seines of acts — a w T ork con- 
tinuously pursued through an inconceivable lapse of time." 
" In almost all the leading Types of Life which have existed in 
the different geological ages, there is an orderly gradation, con- 
necting the Forms which were becoming extinct with the Forms 
which were for the first time appearing in the world." "The in- 
troduction of new species, to take the place of those which have 
passed away, is a work which has been not only so often, but so 
continuously repeated, that it does suggest the idea of having been 
brought about through the instrumentality of SOME NATURAL PROC- 
ESS. But we may say with confidence that it must have been a 
process different from any that we yet know, a process not the same 
as that, obscure as this is, which produces the lesser modifications 



238 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of organic forms" — and which, if true, would violate the "typic- 
al system " and " unity of design." 

It is all the work of the blind forces of nature. But the fore- 
going statement supposes a mutability of the laws of nature, so 
far as necessary to meet exigencies in pantheism ; and in the case 
before us it is without a shadow of ground for its justification. 
But says our Author: 

" If there were any evidence that by the same means new forms 
of life could be developed from the old, I can not see why there 
should be any reluctance to admit the fact. It would be differ- 
ent from any thing that we see, but I do not know that it would 
be at all less wonderful, or that it would bring us much nearer 
than we now stand to the great mystery of Creation. It can only 
be due to the working of a power which is in THE NATURE OF 
Creative Power." 

"We will now give our Author a respite, and listen to Dr.£. 
L. Metcalfe, who is one of the many disciples of our Author's 
school. In his work on Caloric (1843) there appears one of the 
earliest attempts to identify the forces of nature, and in which he 
reduces all of them to the condition of caloric. Nay, more ; he 
affirms that — " The truth is, that elementary fire is the only ap- 
propriate representation of the Divinity ; because it is everywhere 
present, and performs every operation in the physical universe " 
— the prevailing "scientific" doctrine. And Metcalfe shall 
also tell us what is meant by " Creation by Law," and investing 
nature with Intelligence and Will. He quotes several distin- 
guished modern Divines as having " maintained that God is the 
immediate cause of all the mechanical, chemical, and vital opera- 
tions of nature — a doctrine which is wholly irreconcilable with the 
metaphysical notion of an immaterial and superessential First 
Cause."* He thinks, too, as to the origin of living beings out of 

* This is the most dangerous of all the pantheistic modes of representing the gov- 
ernment of the operations of nature ; for it identifies the laws and forces of nature 
with the God of the Theist. And who shall calculate its deplorable effects when ad- 
vocated by such eminent Theological writers as are summoned by Dr. Metcalfe in 
his behalf — such as, "Dr. Cudworth, Dr. Baxter, Samuel Clark, Dr. Dwight, and 
many other distinguished Divines, including the present Bishop of London and Mr. 
Whewell ; and in defending it, Baxter, Clark, and Dwight reason very much in the 
same way as did Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras," &c. I had occasion 
to speak of this doctrine in the "Institutes of Medicine," more than. twenty years 
ago, in the following manner : 



REIGN OF LAW— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 239 

the elements of matter, and through the forces of inorganic na- 
ture, that "there is nothing more mysterious in this than in 
the ordinary process of generation, only that we are more accus- 
tomed to the latter.''' 1 But is the former as well supported by facts 
and the laws of nature as the latter ? (See Chap. YIL) The learned 
Doctor, however, is more perplexed than our Author, the Duke, 
as to the re-appearance of animals and plants to supply the places 
of such as may become extinct. Upon this curious point, which 
is at the basis of Theoretical Geology, he remarks that — 

" It would doubtless be interesting to know whether, if all the 
plants and animals that now inhabit the earth ivere destroyed, sim- 
ilar orders, tribes, and families would gradually arise, in obedi- 
ence to existing laws — whether the higher orders began their ex- 
istence in a very simple state, and gradually advanced from one 
stage of development to another, as the recent discoveries in Ge- 



lt is assumed by many late physiologists, as Drs. Carpenter, Prichard, &c, after 
admitting and denying the existence of the vital properties, and contending for their 
existence in the elements of matter, and the organizing agency of the forces of chem- 
istry, that, nevertheless, all the results of organic beings are owing to the immediate 
acts of the Almighty. This, therefore, as with the author of the "Vestiges of Cre- 
ation," is only a circuitous method of confounding nature with God. Let us, how- 
ever, suppose that there is a Supreme Being in their opinion, who is the Author of 
nature, and that He is the Power who presides in organic beings, and regulates all 
their processes, and we shall see that it abounds with absurdities. Its advocates gen- 
erally carry this sophistry so far as to affirm that the particles of matter are constant- 
ly maintained in union by Almighty Power, that chemical affinities are nothing but 
manifestations of that Power, that gravitation is only a constant emanation of the 
Deity; that digestion, circulation, secretion, excretion, &c, are only immediate acts 
of God. It is plain, therefore, that they can allow no other God than nature. 

But let us now look physiologically at this pantheism. Organic beings are made 
up of matter, which, it will be conceded, is distinct from God, if we allow His exist- 
ence as distinct from matter. It is, therefore, perfectly consistent to suppose that 
this matter is endowed with distinct forces for its own government. If we regard, 
next, the results of vital stimuli, we have a palpable proof that they elicit actions and 
physical results through principles Avhich possess the power of acting, or we must 
take up the absurdity of supposing that they act on God himself. The same may be 
affirmed of the poisons, medicines, &c. But this will not hold, either in Religion or 
philosophy. Nevertheless, it is evident that some active agent is brought into opera- 
tion. If stimulants are applied to the nose, the heart may be thrown, on the instant, 
into increased action, or sneezing may follow. Of course, it can not be entertained 
that God is the agent acted upon in such a case, any more than when prussic acid 
destroys life with the same instantaneousness, and, therefore, He can not be assumed 
as the cause of the healthy and natural functions. 



240 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ologj would seem to indicate — why it is that, among all the high- 
er animals, nearly an equal number of the two sexes were produced, 
— whether THE ORGANIZING principle is both male and female, as 
supposed by the ancient Hindoos and Egyptians, among whom 
it was represented by the Phallus and a Triangle, or generative 
organs of the two sexes." 

"Whether the organizing principle is both male and female." 
What a contrast is here with the Divine statement that — "Male 
and Female created He them." ! ! I know of no writer since the 
time of " the Hindoos and Egyptians " who has attempted an 
explanation of the last of the foregoing " mysteries." And yet 
every project of " Creative Law " means exactly what is here ex- 
pressed — a Law endowed with a Sexual Organizing Principle — 
worthily represented under the symbols of the Phallus and a 
Triangle. But our learned Doctor is about the only modern who 
has ventured to advert to the subject. There is too much of a 
complicated mechanism — too various in the different sexes, and 
in each, individually — too universal throughout the animal and 
vegetable tribes — too much evidence of various and wonderful 
Design and of Unity of Designs — too much of a positive indica- 
tion that the sexual institution is the only method of producing 
living beings — too many absurdities attending any other theory 
— too much proof in the mammary gland alone to admit even the 
conjecture that man and mammiferous animals were not created 
in a state of maturity both of body and mind — too much, I say, 
of all these multifarious Designs, all concurring together, and 
forcing us into the immediate presence of a Personal Creator — 
too much of them to allow the Advocates of the origin of living 
beings in " a Creative Law of Nature " to even hint at the dim- 
culties, although considered worthy of a "scientific" solution by 
their predecessors, " the Hindoos and Egyptians." Our learned 
Doctor stands alone in braving this universal voice of Nature 
since the days of " the Phallus and Triangle." Even Darwin, 
who starts with " a primordial form," and others with a " cell'," 
or a " blastema," have no better chance of escape from the 
crusliing facts than they who begin with the elements of matter ; 
for none of them have ventured to assume that their primordial 
form embraced "the organizing principle of both male and fe- 
male." They are all, indeed, very silent upon the manifold ob- 



KEIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 211 

jections to the developmental hj^potheses, and present us with 
mere assumptions. But let us not lose sight of the Phallus and 
Triangle! 

The Duke of Argyll, to whose work on the "Reign of 
Law " I now return, supplies a very accurate view and criticism 
of Darwin's hypothesis, from which it will be seen, also, wherein 
their developmental doctrines fail of full agreement. Thus the 
Duke— 

"Mr. Darwin does not pretend to have discovered any law or 
rule according to which new Forms have been born from old 
Forms. He frankly confesses that ' our ignorance of the laws of 
variation is profound,' and sa}^s that, in speaking of them as due 
to chance, he means only ' to acknowledge plainly our ignorance 
of the cause of each particular variation.' Again he says — 'I be- 
lieve in no Law of necessary development.' This distinction be- 
tween Mr. Darwin's theory and other theories of Development 
has not, I think, been sufficiently observed; His theory seems to 
be far better than a mere theory — to be AN established scientific 
truth, [!] in so far as it accounts, in part, at least, for the suc- 
cess and establishment and spread of new Forms when they have 
arisen. But it does not even suggest the law under which, and. 
by which, or according to which, such new Forms are introduced. 
Natural selection can do nothing except with the materials pre- 
sented to its hands. It can not select except among the things 
open to selection. Natural selection can originate nothing. It 
can only pick out and choose among the things which are origi- 
nated by some other law. Strictly speaking, therefore, Mr. Dar- 
win's theory is not a theory of the origin of species at all, but 
only a theory on the causes which lead to the relative success or 
failure of such new Forms as may be born into the world. "* "I 

* Professor Owen, in his work on the "Anatomy of Vertebrata," in stating the 
distinction between the Laws of "Derivation" and "Natural Selection," remarks 
that — " 'Derivation' holds that every species changes in time, by virtue of inherent 
tendencies thereto. ' Natural Selection' holds that no such change can take place 
without the influence of altered external circumstances educing or selecting change." 
"Those who hold to the ' pre-existence of germs' maintain that they are transmit- 
ted, sometimes becoming developed, sometimes lying dormant from generation to gen- 
eration, as descendants of ' one form of Natural Selection,' into which life was first 
breathed. Darwin grafts upon this modification of the old evolutional dogma his 
provisional hvpothesis of 'Pangenesis.' " 

16 



242 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

dwell on this, because it lies at the very root of the question, how 
far Mr. Darwin's theory can be said to suggest any thing in the 
nature of Creative Law OF A KIND TO EXPLAIN THE METHOD 
which has been followed in the introduction of new species." 

That is the difference between the two rival Schools of Crea- 
tion. Our Author has a " Creative Law " without " explaining 
the method ;" while Darwin assumes the development of species 
without a Law. Darwin's hypothesis has also a primordial form, 
a blastema or a cell, at least, out of which his ipse dixit develops 
all organic nature ; while our Author and his school start with 
the elements of matter, and thus give to each species an independ- 
ent origin. The analogies of organization among animals are a 
great help to Darwinism, and constitute its ,"Law" of develop- 
ment, with the aid of "time enough," and it only halts at the ad- 
vent of man. But even here Darwinism is in diligent search of 
the animal out of which man was developed, and its projector 
does not doubt that, as he says — "Light will be thrown on the 
origin of man and his history."* He has, moreover, an expecta- 
tion that something will yet be " developed" that will show how 
the human mind was as much a matter of progressive evolu- 
tion as the body itself, and believes that — "In a distant future 
physiology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary 
acquirement of early mental power and capacity by graduation" 
But Darwin's great argument, by which he defies all contradic- 
tion, is this — "It can not be proved" he says, "that the amount 
of variation in the course of long ages is a limited quantity. The 
mind can not grasp THE FULL MEANING of a hundred millions of 
years" In short, Darwin's hypothesis scarcely differs from that 
of Lamaeck. The latter supposes that there is an inherent prin- 

* Since the foregoing was in the hands of the printer, Darwin's work on the De- 
scent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), has made its appearance, in 
which "light is thrown on the origin of man," harmonizing with our Author's gen- 
eral doctrine of development. But it will be seen that its contents have been fully 
anticipated. 

The copious verbiage in relation to " sexual selection" is the merest product of im- 
agination, of which its special embellishment is the gay plumage of birds. Language 
is exhausted upon the feathers. There is nothing of recognized fact or of organic 
science as the basis of the doctrines inculcated in this new work ; and what has been 
said in the present, and in Chapters VI. and VII. , covers the entire ground occupied 
by the work on the "Descent of Man." 



EEIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 213 

ciple in every species of animals and plants by which, through 
long lapses of time, and various agencies, they are developed into 
other species ; and he has a circumstantial account of the meth- 
ods by which the Orang-Outang was developed into the human 
species. Lamarck's doctrine will soon be farther stated. 

The more we interrogate our Author, the Duke, the more we 
shall find him evading the "method" of Creation by Law, till 
finally, as in Darwin's case, he avows that he knows nothing 
about it. Thus, again, oar Author — 

" Particular Forms of Life have attained, at particular epochs, 
a maximum development both in respect to size and distribution 
— the favorites, as it were, of Creation for a time." — But fa- 
voritism in such an " universal plan " will scarcely consist with 
." Creation by Law," much less with the Creator's Unity of De- 
sign. But let us hear our Author a little more particularly as 
to the part which a Personal Creator has had in the production 
of living beings, and the " method of Creation by Law." He 
says that — 

"If I am asked whether I believe that every separate species 
has been a separate creation — not born, but separately made — I 
must answer that I do not believe it. I think the facts do sug- 
gest to the mind the idea of the working of some creative 
Law almost as certainly as they convince us that WE KNOW noth- 
ing OF ITS NATURE, or of the CONDITIONS under which IT DOES 
its glorious work." ! ! 

The foregoing quotation scarcely requires any farther comment 
than that by which it was introduced. There is no Personal 
Creator ; and as " Creative Law " has been operating " through 
an inconceivable lapse of time," beginning with the lowest forms 
of organic beings, and advancing in an ascending series "in an 
orderly gradation " till a " maximum development was attained," 
there has been, of course, no creation whatever by a Personal 
Deity. But what is the meaning of this " Creative Law ?" It 
necessarily means that there is a disposition in inanimate matter 
to assume the conditions of animated beings, attended by a de- 
velopment of Vital Properties and Laws that are peculiar to liv- 
ing beings — utterly different from the Laws of inorganic nature 
under which it is assumed that the Living Beings and their Laws 
came into existence. But that is not the worst of this " philoso- 



2U PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

phy ;" for, of course, it assumes that the Mind must have had a 
corresponding origin, and, therefore, that the so-called Soul is 
either merely a property or a product of matter. Our Author's 
doctrine of " Creative Law " is, therefore, precisely that of the 
School who advocate the origin of Living Beings in the elements 
of matter through their inherent properties; the absurdities of 
which I have already sufficiently demonstrated. (See particu- 
larly Chap.YIL) 

As nature abounds with evidences of Design, it is necessarily 
invested by the advocates of spontaneity of living beings with a 
Will and Intelligence ; and under this cover the credulous or 
unreflecting are betrayed into the belief that a Higher Power 
than nature is thus, in some obscure manner, implied. But no- 
where does our author, or others of the developmental Schools, 
when speaking of Living Beings, recognize a Creator distinct 
from nature. Our author says that — 

" The pretended separation between that which lies within na- 
ture and that which lies beyond nature is a dismemberment of the 
truth. Let both those who find it difficult to believe in any 
thing which is above the natural, and those Who insist on that be- 
lief, first determine how far the natural extends." "Above and 
behind every detected method in nature there lies the same ulti- 
mate question as before — What is it by which this is done f It 
is the great mystery of our being that we have powers impelling 
us to ask such questions when we have no powers enabling us to 
solve them. It is probable that the nearest methods of Creation, 
though far short of ultimate truths, lie behind a veil too thick for 
us to penetrate." 

So far from "having no powers enabling us to solve" the 
origin and existence of all things, it is totally an unfounded as- 
sumption. We know with the most absolute certainty that liv- 
ing beings were created by a Being as Personal as ourselves, 
with the same Designing and Constructive Powers — only ex- 
tended to Infinity. We know this through the unending, pre- 
cise, and complex Designs in all organic nature. If we have no 
difficulty in understanding that the "steam-engine," which is so 
much admired in materialism, was the production of Mind, surely 
there can be as little in representing as clearly to ourselves a 
Personality of Mind as the Author of a being so " fearfully and 



EEIGN OF LAW.— CKEATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 215 

wonderfully made as man," who has himself been capable of 
constructing a machine which is often compared by the Material- 
ist to the human mechanism. Nor may Pantheism prevaricate 
by assuming that in the latter case we call up the material image 
of the man as the subject of our conceptions; for it is entirely 
astray from the truth. On the contrary, we do not think in the 
least of the hands or the hammer that fabricated the machine, 
but of the mind alone that contrived it. By those same " powers 
which impel us to ask such questions " we also arrive at a certain 
knowledge that the Being who brought the elements of matter 
into the organic conditions of His living creatures could have 
had no greater difficulty in bringing the elements themselves 
into existence — and that, too, " ex nihilo." Whatever is in 
opposition to this is merely an ambitious attempt to place the 
human understanding "behind a veil too thick for us to pene- 
trate." 

"Creative Law" is the fundamental principle of all the hy- 
potheses of development, and the "Reign of Law" is the admin- 
istration of the code under which the developments are con- 
ducted. But I have variously and extensively demonstrated, 
both by specified facts and. the soundest principles of all the 
natural sciences, that every developmental hypothesis, and the 
"Reign of Law" in its application to the origin of living beings, 
are in absolute conflict with the facts and laws of nature ; and 
these laws are allowed by all to be immutable. 

But our representative Author, the Duke, shall have the fullest 
justice, and in his own words — always so, indeed. Here is a 
comprehensive statement which covers the whole delusive sys- 
tem of Pantheism, and in the most appropriate language. Thus 
our Author, agreeing fully with my interpretation of " Creative 
Law," and in full consistency with himself — 

"Creation by Law — Evolution by Law — Development by 
Law, or, as including all those kindred ideas, the Reign of Law, 
is nothing but the Reign of Creative force directed by Crea- 
tive knowledge, worked under the control of Creative Power, 
and in fulfillment of Creative purposes." 

Or take the words of another eminent writer, the Rev. Profess- 
or Whewell, who holds the same doctrine as the Duke, and 
who is one of the " distinguished Divines " to whom Dr. Met- 



2i6 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

calfe refers (page 238) ; and let us show, by a simple syllogism, 
that the doctrine ignores a Personal Creator. Thus says Whew- 
ell, in his Bridgewater Treatise — 

" We infer that the intelligence by which the law is ordained, 
the power by which it is put in action, must be present at all times 
and in all places where the effects of the law occur ; that thus the 
knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every 
portion of the universe, producing all action, -all phenomena and 
change. The Laws of Nature are the laws which He, in his wis- 
dom, prescribes to his own acts ; his universal presence is the neces- 
sary condition of any course of events, his universal agency the only 
origin of any efficient force. 11 

Such, then, with our Eev. Professor, and all others of the 
school of " Creative Law," are the premises and the conclusion. 
That is to say — 

" Nature is governed by laws. The laws of nature are the laws 
which the Divine Being prescribes for his own acts, and his agency 
produces all action. 11 Therefore, the laws of nature are the Divine 
Being. 

That the Creator maintains a control over His second causes 
and the laws by which they are directed, no one can doubt who 
believes in their supernatural origin, although they are so or- 
dained as to operate independently of the Creator's direct inter- 
position. Nevertheless, the belief is also avowed by all who of- 
fer prayer to the Supreme Being, and in the sincerity which is 
so implied, that He does interpose His influence in giving a spe- 
cial direction to those causes when special ends are to be fulfilled 
which would not ensue without such interposition, and which 
does not interfere with their general operation ; and they believe, 
also, that the Creator has determined events, as in the case of mir- 
acles, either by extraordinary co-operation with second causes, or 
in perfect independence of them. But this is a very different 
view of the subject from that which supposes the Creator to be 
the efficient cause of events in the general operations of nature, 
(instead of His second causes and laws) — that it is He " who pro- 
duces all action and passion, and that His agency is the only ori- 
gin of any efficient force." Even in respect to the organization 
of the earth, as I shall endeavor to show (Appendix I.), He sim- 
ply co-operated with the properties and laws which He had im- 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 247 

pressed upon matter; and here we witness a clear demonstration, 
in the effects of the united action, of that which was the result of 
Creative Energy and that which was delegated to second causes. 
When the work of Creation was completed, we have every rea- 
son to suppose that the laws which relate to the physical consti- 
tution of inorganic and organic nature became established substi- 
tutes for Creative Energy, and that they effect their results with- 
out any direct instrumentality of the Divine Being. All our Sci- 
ences are built upon this foundation, not upon conceptions of Di- 
vine action. The apparent exceptions, known as miracles and 
Providential interpositions, have strictly a reference to the moral 
government of responsible beings, and these neither enter into 
our scientific calculations, nor do they in the least interfere with 
them. Therein may be seen the distinction between government 
by established laws and government by Divine action. Nor is 
there in the latter case any " suspension of the laws of nature," 
according to the usual phraseology ; nothing but a Divine inter- 
position to- bring about a particular event that relates to man 
alone. If the miracle in the Valley of Ajalon, when the sun and 
the moon stood still, was owing to a suspension of the earth's 
revolution upon its axis, there was not a suspension of a law of 
nature, for the law was elsewhere in universal operation. It sim- 
ply involved the same abstract exercise of Divine Power as was 
concerned in the general Deluge, or in the resurrection of Laza- 
rus, or in other miracles. They are the strongest examples, also, 
of the only direct agency which the Creator has manifested in 
the events of the natural world. All else has been committed to 
causes substituted for Creative Power, and the laws under which 
they operate. This is the dictate of all the facts upon which the 
Sciences repose, and of what is observed of the moral government 
of the human race. Laws have been established in Astronomy, 
chemistry, the economy of organic beings, which have not been 
contradicted by any phenomenon. The distinction between the 
great system of natural laws and the partial deviations in behalf 
of the instability and imperfections of human reason and human 
affairs appears to be strongly pronounced. It is the latter about 
which Eeligion is concerned. 

As to second causes, the Pantheistic School studiously avoid 
the term., for that would imply a First Cause. It is always the 



248 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"laws of nature," or a "creative law," or a "creative force," 
which are used as convertible terms. It is like the modern 
school of " Spiritualism," of which Professor Phelps, of Andover 
Seminary, remarks, that — " In another of its tangents, it flies off 
in a deification l of the forces of nature, called God? Excuse us, gen- 
tlemen, whatever else this may be, it is not Eeligion." Panthe- 
ism necessarily invests the forces of nature with Divine attri- 
butes — such as "Creative knowledge" and "Creative purpose." 
Our Author, the Duke, affirms that — "It is impossible to de- 
scribe or explain the facts we meet with in any branch of Sci- 
ence without, investing the Laws of Nature with something of 
that personality which they do actually reflect, or without con- 
ceiving of them as partaking of those attributes of mind which, we 
everywhere recognize in their working and results." Our Au- 
thor even brings to his support the Prophets of old — 

" They never revolt," he says, "as so many do in these weaker 
days, from the idea of Divine Power working by wisdom and 
knowledge in the use of means — [very true, excepting in many 
cases of miracles] ; nor, in this point of view, do they ever sepa- 
rate between the work of the first Creation and the w T ork which is 
going on daily in the existing world" — which is very untrue, as 
is attested by the whole Narrative of Creation. 

The Scriptures simply inculcate the fact in relation to the 
daily events of the existing world, that the Creator maintains 
His Power over the laws w T hich he ordained at the era of Crea- 
tion, and that He is Omniscient and Omnipresent. Moreover, in 
the original Creation, when God launched the universe into being, 
the only means at His command was His Own Creative Energy. 
Until then He had no "materials" for the construction of living 
beings ; and when they were organized, it was equally an act of 
Creative Energy, excepting the elements of matter of which they 
are composed, and which had been already created — ex nihilo. 
Our Author, however, says — 

" I do not know on what authority it is that we so often speak 
as if Creation was not Creation, unless it w T orks from nothing as 
its material and by nothing as its means?' 1 

That involves the eternity of matter ; which, in connection 
with the origin of living beings through the instrumentality of 
the forces of inorganic nature, is the very worst aspect of pan the- 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 249 

ism. The believers in a Personal God, sustained by all that is 
known of nature, by all its laws, and forces, and facts, cau have 
no compromise with the doctrine. But our Author, the Duke, 
continues thus — 

" We know that ' out of the dust of the ground ' — that is, out of 
the ordinary elements of nature — are our bodies formed, and the 
bodies of all living beings. Nor is there any thing that should 
shock us in the idea that the creation of new Forms, any more 
than their propagation, has been brought about by the use and 
instrumentality of means." 

Now our Author must surely know that there is no analogy 
whatever between the creation^of living beings out of the "ele- 
ments of nature" and their "propagation" by means of the 
sexes. There can, therefore, be no reasoning from one to the 
other. But such is the delusive nature of the "Beign of Law" 
when aiming at its indiscriminate application, and especially at 
its substitution for a Personal Creator. Nor does our Author 
derive the most slender support from his quotation from Profess- 
or Owen, who rejects, in his "Palceontoloyy" the interposition of 
Divine Power, when he says that — "We discern no evidence 
of pause or intermission in the creation, or COMING-TO-BE, of new 
plants and animals ;" since the affirmation is not only positively 
contradicted by the laws of nature, and by the established modes 
of propagation throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
but by all human observation. (Owen's doctrine will be farther 
quoted in Chapters X. and XIII.). We have also from the Duke, 
as we have seen of others, an analogical deduction from the 
structure of crystals as to the possible origin of living beings in 
the forces of nature. Thus — 

"In the inorganic world we know that not mere similarity, but 
absolute identity of forms — as in crystals — is the result of laws 
which have nothing to do with Inheritance, but of forces whose 
nature it is to aggregate the particles of matter [not elements] 
into identic shapes." Therefore, says our Author — "It is im- 
possible to say how far a similar unity of effect may have been 
impressed on the forces through which vital organisms are FIRST 
STARTED ON THEIR WAY." 

In reply to the foregoing, it may be said, with great emphasis, 
that crystals "have nothing to do" — nothing whatever — with 



250 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"Vital Organisms " — not the most remote analogy between them. 
This,«also, would have been appreciated by our Author had he 
understood Anatomy and Physiology. And, secondly, there is 
no analogy between the compounded particles of matter of which 
crystals are aggregated, and the simple elements of matter whose 
forces are supposed to have " first started Vital Organisms on 
their way." (See this question at p. 155-160.) 

I now come more particularly to our Author's philosophy of 
the human Mind, which must also engage our attention, al- 
though the reader has, doubtless, formed his own conclusions as 
to its nature. But the work is one of the most important that 
has yet appeared in behalf of universal materialism, and embraces 
all the best philosophy of the subject. The ascription of Will 
and Intelligence to the material universe, and presenting it as a 
" Creator " or " Creative Power," is the culmination of the new 
doctrine of "Correlation or Equivalence of Forces." Its princi- 
pal element, " no matter no force," is- not only employed to abol- 
ish the Soul, but to make the material universe the only Crea- 
tive Power. Moreover, I reiterate that, such are the analogies 
between the Divine and the human Mind, if the latter be the 
product of matter, so also, by an irresistible logic, must be the 
former. The application of the doctrines of the "Equivalence 
of Forces," and "No matter no Force," to the Soul, is a pre-, 
tended scientific corroboration of the old notion of the self-exist- 
ence of matter, and, therefore, addresses itself with greater pre- 
tensions to human credulity ; and whoever respects his own rea- 
son, if not his faith, will not be led into the snare. 

Our author, the Duke, prepares us for his coming demonstra- 
tion against the Soul in the following manner : 

" Undoubtedly the first thought which suggests itself to the 
mind is, that material Force and a moral or intellectual force are 
. essentially different in hind — not subject to conditions the same, 
or even similar. But are we sure of this? Are we sure that 
the forces which we call material are not, after all; but Mani- 
festations of Mental Energy or Will? [!] We have al- 
ready seen that such evidence as we have is all tending the 
other way. The conclusions forced upon us have been these : 
first, that the more we know of nature, the more certain it ap- 
pears that a multitude of separate forces does not exist, but that 



KEIGN OF LAW.— CEEATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 251 

ALL HEE FORCES PASS INTO EACH OTHER, AND ARE BUT MODIFI- 
CATIONS OF some ONE force which is the source and the centre 
of the rest. Secondly, that ALL OF them are governed in their 
mutual relations by principles of arrangement which are 
purely mental. [!] Thirdly, that of the ultimate seat of force 
in any we know nothing directly. And, fourthly, that the near- 
est conception we can ever have of force is derived from our 
consciousness of vital power." 

Such, then, is absolute materialism as it respects the Soul ; 
and this induction from our Author's premises is too manifest for 
another word. But our Author does not altogether like the 
term, and endeavors to relieve it by a parallel between mental 
force and other modifications of force. 

'"Closer analysis of the phenomena of nature," he says, "and 
of our own ideas in regard to them, has already prepared us to 
believe that those forces which work in matter, and produce im- 
pressions from which we derive our conceptions of it, are them- 
selves immaterial, and may be traced up into a region where they 
are lost in the light of mind " — or where they are transmuted into 
mental force, and which, therefore, is still immaterial. 

That would be very good logic if it were granted that the 
Soul is only a modification of the forces of matter ; but until that 
is shown we must pursue some other method to demonstrate its 
immateriality. The explanation is a mere evasion, a mere as- 
sumption that materialism consists in what it does not, to obtain 
the confidence of the Christian believer. It is of no moment 
whatever, whether the force which is supposed to give rise to 
the phenomena of Mind be material or immaterial, so long as 
the essential source of thought is assumed to consist of a mod- 
ified force of matter. * 

* Had the doctrine of the immateriality of force any bearing upon the question be- 
fore us, it might be shown that it is disputed by writers of our Author's School, and 
shown by them to be unsupported by facts. Thus, Dr. Metcalfe, in his work on 
Caloric, has the following common-sense remarks : 

" It has been said, that 'the material theory contains an inherent vice, by assum- 
ing the existence of a body which has never been obtained in the separate form.' 
But if caloric do not exist in a separate state while passing through a vacuum, all our 
reasonings about it are fallacious and unintelligible. Nor is it possible to explain in a 
simple and satisfactory manner any single one of the phenomena ascribed to it by all 
parties, in accordance with the hypothesis that it is identical with motion, which is 



252 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

It is in this acceptation that materialism, as applied to the 
Mind and mental processes, consists; not at all in a supposed 
materiality of force or of a Soul. If the latter be material, it is 
still as much a distinct entity and a self-acting Agent, and still 
as responsible, as if it were immaterial. Nor is it important to 
man whether it be one or the other ; nor can its immateriality 
be demonstrated — -only rendered in the highest degree probable, 
and this mostly so by the analogies which subsist between the 
Mind of man and the Divine Mind ; for no one but the Material- 
ist supposes that the Creator consists of matter and force, but 
that He is an Omnipotent Being who is perfectly distinct from 
the matter of which He is the Author. (See Chap. V.) 

But what about the immortality of the Soul, which, in a per- 
sonal sense, is a question of graver importance? Our Author 
gets at this, not by any reasoning, not by any "Law," but purely 
by an appeal to the Christian's faith in the Resurrection of the 
body. Matter is indispensable to force, and special conditions of 
matter, according to the doctrine of "Correlation or Equivalence 
of Forces," are necessary to the modifications of force and the va- 
riety of their manifestations, respectively. Hence it follows that 
our bodies must be raised from the dead as they now exist, if 
any human thought is to reappear after the grave. But accord- 
ing to " Correlation or Equivalence, or Metamorphosis and Con- 
servation of Forces," force is indestructible, and therefore im- 
mortal; and when the body dies, the modified force which en- 
abled the brain, &c, to display the manifestations of Mind, hav- 
ing lost its special substratum, passes into some other form of 
matter, where it appears in the aspect of heat, electricity, mag- 
netism, gravitation, &c. But the resurrection of the body enables 
the force to reappear in its former modified condition of Mind. 
Here is our Author's argument : 

"The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body in- 
volves the notion that there is some deep connection between 

manifestly not an agent, but merely some body in the act of moving, and always im- 
plies the existence of a mover." "The advocates of the immaterial theory have 
never explained what causes bodies to vibrate ; nor what keeps the particles of solids, 
liquids, and gases at a distance from each other while quiescent, or free from vibra- 
tory motion. And it is worthy of special notice that caloric is disengaged by press- 
ure, friction, or percussion, only so long as- bodies undergo condensation." (Other 
remarks upon it at Chap. VI.) 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 253 

spirit and form which is essential, and which can not be "finally 
sundered even in the divorce of death. The affections hold to 
this idea even more firmly than the intellect;" — and our Author 
brings to the support of this Tennyson's " passionate exclama- 
tion:" 

"Eternal form shall still divide 
The eternal soul from all beside, 
And I shall know him when we meet." 

Here the " immaterial force " receives the designation of spirit 
while associated with the human brain. But what of that body 
which, in the Christian acceptation, is to undergo resurrection ? 
Is it conformable to the requisites of "Correlation," &c, which 
demands the reappearance of our identical bodies for the mani- 
festations of Mind ? Not at all so ; but something totally differ- 
ent, and therefore, according to our Author's doctrine, there can 
be no reappearance of 'the human Mind, but it must forever ex- 
ist in some modified condition as different, as Mind, when asso- 
ciated with the body, differs from heat. For the " Christian doc- 
trine of resurrection " declares that — " It is sown a natural body, 
it is raised a spiritual body. As is the earthy, such are they also 
that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are 
heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood can 
not inherit the kingdom of heaven." — And our Lord af- 
firms that " Spirits have no flesh and bones." Now what 
a contrast of things is that — a body without flesh, or blood, or 
bones for the materialistic doctrines of " Matter and Force," and 
the " Correlation, Equivalence, or Metamorphosis of Forces." ! ! 

But the incautious Duke, in endeavoring to protect himself 
against the damaging imputation of materialism, convicts himself 
of the exact doctrine. The following is his creed, in his own 
" exact import of words." Thus — 

" But here, again, let us beware of the fallacies which may arise 
from a failure to recognize the exact import of the words we 
use. In the ears of many it sounds like Materialism to say that 
thought is A function of the brain. But it has been al- 
ready shown in a previous chapter that function is merely the 
word by which we describe that work to which any given piece of 
mechanism has been adjusted. The Power or Force which is 
developed through means of an organ is not identical with that or- 



254 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

gan, nor with any of its parts, nor with the materials of which it 
is composed, nor even with its mechanism as a whole. It does 
not follow, for example, that Electeicity is identical with the 

TISSUES OF A FISH, BECAUSE IT IS DEVELOPED out of the battery 
of a Torpedo or a Gyrnnotus. Yet it is true that the development 
AND DISCHARGE OF ELECTRICITY IS THE FUNCTION of those 

fish organs — that is to say, this is the work which they have 

BEEN ADJUSTED TO PERFORM." 

Such, then, is a very accurate description of an organic func- 
tion ; and it is also a very exact description of the* secretory doc- 
trine of Materialism. Indeed, it is unsurpassed — so that I have 
placed the most precise parts of it in capitals. It affirms that the 
production of Thought is the function of the brain, just as the pro- 
duction of electricity is the function of the battery of a torpedo 
or a gyrnnotus, or as the production of bile is the function of the 
liver. It is exactly the materialistic doctrine of the secretion of 
Mind in its comprehensive sense. It places the elimination of the 
materialistic mental force on the same ground precisely as that 
of any physical product of the body, and renders the brain the 
only source of Thought ; which is excited to the performance of 
the function, like the battery of the torpedo, the liver, &c, by 
fhe blood or other remote physical agents. But our Author 
would never have placed this upon record but from his mistaken 
notion, as we have before seen, that materialism consists in affirm- 
ing the mcderiality of the secreted or developed force, and which 
]ed him to premise that he"at, electricity, &c, are "immaterial" 
(Chap; V.). 

In the foregoing opinion Professor Owen, in his work on the 
11 -Anatomy of the Vertebrates" (1868, vol. iii.), agrees verbatim. 
Thus — " Thought relates to the brain of man as does Electricity to 
the nervous battery of the Torpedo ; both are forms of force, and 
the results of action of their .respective organs?" "A general phys- 
iological conclusion from the phenomen^of the nervous system 
inevitably brings on a collision with a dogmatic affirmation or defi- 
nition of the cause of the highest class of those phenomena in- 
stilled as an article of religious faith into fellow-Christians, and on 
which is based their mode of thought affecting dearest hopes and 
highest aspirations. It must be repugnant to any good man's 
feelings to say aught that may unsettle such mode of thought." 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 255 

Then why attempt to " unsettle such mode of thought " with- 
out offering a better substitute than the " Conservation" of that 
physical force which is assumed to have been " correlated into 
Mental Force " by the organic condition of the brain ? The emi- 
nent Author goes on immediately to dispose of the Soul by ob- 
jecting to its analogy even to a musician's fiddlestick. Thus — 

" If the hypothesis that an abstract entity produces psycholog- 
ical phenomena by playing upon the brain as a musician upon his 
instrument, producing bad music when the fibres or cords are 
out of tune, be rejected, and those phenomena be held to be the 
result of cerebral actions, an objection is made that the latter view 
is ' materialistic, 1 and adverse to the notion of an independent, in- 
divisible, immaterial, mental principle or Soul." No disavowal 
of the Soulj and affirmation of materialism, can be more explicit. 
And again — "In the endeavor to clearly comprehend and explain 
the functions of the combination of forces called brain, the Physi- 
ologist is hindered and troubled by the views of the nature of 
those cerebral forces which the needs of dogmatic theology have im- 
posed upon mankind. 1 '' ! ! 

A doctrine very similar to the foregoing was taught by Epi- 
curus (342 B.C.). It is said that — 

" He conceived the Soul to be a fine, elastic, sublimated, spir- 
itualized gas, or aura, composed of the most subtle parts of the 
atmosphere, as caloric, pure air, and vapor, introduced into the 
system in the act of respiration, peculiarly elaborated by peculiar 
organs, and united with a something still lighter, still rarer, and 
more active than all the rest; at that time destitute of name, and 
incapable of sensible detection, offering a wonderful resemblance to 
the electricity of modern times. In the words of Lucretius, who 
has so accurately and elegantly described the whole Epicurean 
system, thus translated — 

" 'Far from all vision this profoundly lurks, 

Through the whole system's utmost depth diffused, 
And lives as soul of e'en the soul itself.' 

" ■ The Soul thus produced,' Epicurus affirmed, ' must be mate- 
rial, because we trace it issuing from a material source ; because it 
exists, and exists alone in a material system; is nourished by ma- 
terial food ; grows with the growth of the body ; becomes ma- 



256 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tured with its maturity ; declines with its decay ; and hence, 
whether belonging to man or brutes, must die with its death. 111 

From the doctrine just quoted from our Author, the Duke, un- 
avoidably results his fundamental law in respect to Mind, that 
"Mind is as much subject to Law as the body is." — "Forces which 
are in essence, and their source utterly mysterious, are always be- 
ing found to operate under rules which have strict reference to 
measures of number — to relations of space and time." And this 
is the key to his denial of freedom of Will and to the distinction 
which he makes between the Will of Man and animals. But we 
are now interested about the Mind of man, who has very little 
Instinct, but Eeason instead. Let us here extend the former 
part of our last quotation. 

" The Mind is as much subject to Law as the body is. The 
Keign of Law is over all ; and if its dominion be really incom- 
patible with the agency of volition, human and Divine, then the 
mind is as inaccessible to that agency as material things." 

The syllogism is its own interpreter. The premises are dis- 
tinct, and the conclusion unavoidable. Here we might rest this 
discussion with our Author, were it simply an object to present a 
fair analysis of his work as it respects our subject. But the op- 
portunity of exhibiting the best exposition and defense of ma- 
terialism that has yet been attempted is too important to allow 
us to neglect any advantage which its advocates may claim, or 
which may be converted to our own purposes. I, therefore, pass 
on to another parallel illustration of the purely physical origin 
of Thought. Thus— 

" The muscidar contractions of the body stand at the very fount 
and origin of all we do; and it is more than probable that analo- 
gous movements of the brain stand as near the oeigin of cdl we 
think." 

Here, then, in the first place, the only ground of reasoning 
from " muscular contractions" to " analogous movements of the 
brain" must consist alone in the fact that the analogy exists, and 
in the relationship) of the phenomena of muscular contractions 
and of the processes of Eeason ; and surely I need not say that 
there is none whatever in either respect. It, therefore, fails en- 
tirely of placing the brain on common ground, or in any func- 
tional relationship with the muscles, and equally, also, of placing 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 257 

the results of "muscular contractions" and of "analogous move- 
ments of the brain" in any corresponding aspect. Nor has it 
been in the least demonstrated that acts of the Mind are attended 
by movements of the brain — not even of its component mole- 
cules. Its mode of participation in the production of mental 
phenomena is totally unknown. The conclusion has been en- 
tirely predicated of the results of physical influences upon other 
parts of the body. Secondly — Moreover, so far is it from the 
other aspect of the supposed analogy, that " the muscular con- 
tractions stand at the very fount and origin of all we do," it is the 
brain, or rather the Mind, that is "the fount and origin of all we 
do" — the very contractions of the muscles having their origin in 
that organ which supplies the exciting nervous influence. These 
expedients of Materialism, so at war with facts, and so readily 
accepted by those unacquainted with anatomy and the laws and 
functions of the nervous system, demand an unreserved, so only 
a fair, exposure. 

It is also a great mistake of our Author to suppose that dis- 
eases of the brain, in their influences upon the Mind, go to the 
proof of his doctrine. It simply shows that the brain, in being 
the organ of the Soul for the purpose especially of associating 
the spiritual part with the organs of sense and the voluntary 
muscles — it shows that the integrity of the brain, as might be 
inferred, a priori, is essential to an unembarrassed operation of 
the Mind. Hence the following statement has no significance, 
as bearing upon materialism, but is an abstract fact without any 
reference to the phenomena that declare an associate self-acting 
Principle which, for example, manifestly calls the brain into op- 
eration in all acts of the Will in voluntary motion. Thus our 
Author — ■ 

" When the bursting of a small duct of blood upon the brain is 
seen to destroy in a moment the mind of man, and to break down all 
the powers of his intellect and will, we are in presence of a fact 
whose significance can not be increased by a million of other 
facts analogous in kind." 

" Small duct of blood" is good for materialism, but is as bad 
for the brain as "the bursting" of a larger one. The blood will 
equally accumulate from the smaller as the larger vessel, and 
break up the brain as effectually as a blow of a hammer. Such 

17 



258 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

is the condition of the brain in our Author's hypothetical case. 
But look at a contrast. A paroxysm of Anger and of Joy has 
not only "destroyed in a moment the Mind of man, and broken 
down all the powers of his Intellect and Will," but it has at the 
same moment killed the entire life of the body without leaving a 
trace of any injury of the train. 'Are we not here in the presence 
of a fact " which routs the enemy ? If the effusion of blood and 
laceration of the brain kills in our Author's case, there must be 
something that does the mischief in the other ; and if it can be 
intelligibly shown that any thing but a Substantive, Self-acting 
Agent is the efficient cause, by inflicting a violent shock upon 
the brain — a sort of suicidal act — then Materialism may defy all 
comers. Our Author must try again ; and in doing this he will 
probably point to the so-called "forces" which led to the parox- 
ysm of Anger or Joy — perhaps a fancied insult, or a sudden ac- 
quisition of wealth. That is the only retreat ; but it leaves the 
subject just where it was left. In either case, the remote cause 
which rouses the Mind exerts its primary effect upon the Mind. 
Or, suppose that the paroxysm of anger is excited by offensive 
words or demeanor. An impression, in this case, is made upon 
the brain through the medium of the senses, of which the Mind 
takes cognizance — and that is Sensation (p. 29). The Mind, then, 
elaborates the Sensation according to the meaning of the words 
spoken and the attitude of the offender, and it may submit pas- 
sively, or it may let loose a tornado of passion ; and this may 
depend upon whether there was a provoking display of an open 
palm or a special expression of the facial muscles. But even at 
the worst a good-natured man may exercise a Christian forbear- 
ance, and " offer the other cheek also." No harm is done by the 
insulting words, &c, in the one case, but death in the other. But 
if the words and offensive demeanor (or either alone) of the as- 
sailant kill, in the latter case, by their action on the brain, accord- 
ing to the Materialist, then, surely, they should have the same 
effect when the assaulted suppresses his passion, but when no 
harm ensues. Hence it is obvious that, whatever remote causes 
may be concerned by their action upon the brain in bringing 
the Mind into violent operation, they have nothing to do with 
any injury inflicted upon the organ. That is altogether due to 
the immediate Mental Cause. Or, take the case of sudden death 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 259 

from a paroxysm of Joy, where nothing but the most agreeable 
Emotion is set in operation ; as, when a pauper hears of an unex- 
pected inheritance of a million. Surely, such in themselves are 
no killing words, whether they come through the ear or the vis- 
ual organ. 

And thus the parallel runs throughout with our Author's ex- 
ample of the "small duct of blood." Some remote cause has 
been the occasion of the rupture of the duct, but has had no ac- 
tion upon the brain. The injury of the organ has been wholly 
inflicted by the effused blood. The cases are thus far entirely 
parallel. But rn the one case the agent is purely passive, while 
in the other it is purely self-acting. The Mind may resist the in- 
fluence of the remote cause, and save the brain from its destruc- 
tive effect; or it may kindle itself into a tempest of Anger, or a 
paroxysm of Joy, and thus impart a shock to the brain. which 
kills, not only the life of the organ, but, through that destructive 
effect upon the brain, the life of the whole organic fabric. Who- 
ever has a Mind disposed to look impartially at the facts will 
necessarily regard the effused blood or the blow of a hammer 
and the action of the Mind, in the several cases, as equally the 
immediate, efficient cause of the death of the brain and body. 

It may be useful to the reader uninformed in Physiology to 
correct another important error which our Author inculcates 
with an air of plausibility. It occurs in the following sentence : 

" No series of facts tending to the establishment of any phys- 
ical truth is more complete or more conclusive than the chain 
which connects the functions of the brain with the phenomena 
of mind." 

Now the illustration just before quoted of the "bursting of 
some small duct of blood" comprehends about the whole "chain 
of facts " that " connect the functions of the brain with the phe- 
nomena of mind," and "can not be increased by a million of 
other facts of an analogous nature." The subserviency of the 
brain as it relates obscurely to the phenomena of Mind is not 
doubted by the Spiritualist. But such is not what is understood 
by the functions of that organ, which refer to the actions of all 
other parts, and to its own condition as an organ. The real fact 
is, therefore, there is no connection whatever between the func- 
tions of the brain, properly so called, and the phenomena of 



260 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Mind, excepting as the functions of the organ are necessary to 
its own natural condition and the relations which they bear to 
the functions of other organs. In sleep all the phenomena of 
Mind are completely suspended, and yet the functions of the 
brain go on as perfectly as in the midst of the deepest thought, 
and without the slightest apparent modification; nor can any 
analogy whatever be derived from other organs to illustrate the 
subserviency of the brain to the processes of Mind. But what- 
ever it be, the Soul and Instinctive Principle make the initiatory 
movement as originating self-acting Agents; though, when Sensa- 
tion operates, the Mind is called into action by some inapprecia- 
ble impression upon the brain, when the Mind, through an equal- 
ly inappreciable concurrence of the organ, takes cognizance of 
the impression. But I have gone extensively over this ground in 
my direct demonstration of the Soul and Instinctive Principle. 

In connection with a former quotation relative to the secretion 
of Mind (p. 254), our Author remarks that — "We have no 
knowledge of what the forces are which demand obedience, and 
which call for this contrivance," the brain. Certainly, no other 
force in nature than a self-acting one can be possibly surmised as 
rendering the brain tributary to mental processes. Grant this 
self-acting Agent, and the whole mystery disappears. There will 
then be no occasion for surmising the " development of a force 
as the function of the brain" upon which Thought depends 
(p. 254). The absolute analogies of the human Mind to the Di- 
vine Mind will then remove any doubt that such an Agent per- 
forms all the essential work, and enable us to understand that, 
in being associated with the brain to connect us with the world 
of matter through the senses and voluntary muscles, that organ 
is in all consistency rendered tributary to all the operations of 
the Agent. We have seen that it is a common pretense that we 
know nothing of the nature of physical forces, and therefore noth- 
ing of the nature of mind; and the same is equally alleged of 
the " Unknowable." This is very true ; but it is alike true of 
matter. It is, however, in no respect our question — only delu- 
sive sophistry ; and I would keep before the reader the facts that 
we know the existence of each by their phenomena or manifesta- 
tions, and by those alone — that from these we reason to the laws 
which the forces of matter obey, and that this is the only knowl- 



EEIGN OF LAW— CEEATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 261 

edge that is useful to man — that of their nature of no use what- 
ever. 

Our Author has much to say upon the freedom of the human 
Will, which he places under the influence of Law, and identifies 
it, in principle, with the Will of animals. The distinction which 
he makes consists in the greater variety of influences which 
operate in giving direction to the Will of man. Our Author 
thus — 

11 Free will, in the only sense in which this expression is intel- 
ligible, has been erroneously represented as the peculiar prerog- 
ative of man. But the Will of the lower animals is as free as 
ours. A man is not more free to go to the right hand or to the 
left than the eagle, or the wren, or the mole, or the bat. The 
only difference is that the Will of the lower animals is acted 
upon by fewer and simpler motives, and the lower the organiza- 
tion of the animal the fewer and simpler these motives are." 
" The conduct of animals is less capable of being predicted in 
proportion as it is difficult or impossible to foresee the nature 
and number of the motive forces which are brought to bear upon 
the Will. Man's Will is free in the same sense, and in the same 
sense only. It is subject to Law in the same sense, and in the same 
sense alone. That is to say, it is subject to the influence of mo- 
tives, and it can only choose among those which are presented to 
it, or which it has been given the power of presenting to itself." 

This consistency necessarily grows out of our Author's doc- 
trine of the secretion of Mind (p. 254). It is that which leads 
him to place the Instinct of animals and the Mind of man so 
equally under the Eeign of Law, that he loses sight of the fact 
that man is endowed with Eeason, properly so called, by which 
the Soul is especially distinguished from the Instinctive Princi- 
ple. Man, indeed, has very little Instinct; and it is Eeason, 
therefore, in man which gives determination to his Will ; al- 
though the latter is so strongly pronounced that it appears to ex- 
ercise a commanding influence over the Eational Faculties, how- 
ever much these Faculties may be instrumental in bringing the 
Will into operation (p. 57). In animals the operation of the 
Will is considerably a matter of law, for, as will be seen (Chapter 
XVI.), animal Instinct is ordained for the well-being of organic 
life, and has no higher aim. But this distinction is, of course, 



262 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

not recognized in materialism. Our Author, however, occasion- 
ally makes a distinction between the mental capabilities of man 
and animals as it respects the influence of motives ; and it is the 
relative ability of one or the other to choose among them — 
which, nevertheless, is determined by Law. 

" In this last power," our Author goes on, " we touch the se- 
cret of that boundless difference which separates man from the 
highest of the animals below him." " He is exposed, indeed, to 
the lower motives in common with the beasts. But there are 
others which operate largely upon him, which never can and 
never do operate upon them." "It is true that our Wills can 
never be free from motives, and in this sense w T e can never be 
free from Law." " It is from compulsion that our Wills are 
fkee, and from nothing else." But mark — "■ To our Will," 
he says, "has been given the power of presenting motives to itself." 

In describing the special motive influences which operate 
upon man's Will as distinguished from that of animals, he refers 
them to sources which, collectively, make up the endowments of 
Eeason. But our various quotations bearing upon the subject 
enable us to understand the true import of the terms as em- 
ployed by our Author, and the whole drift of the discussion. 
The terms are necessarily employed in conformity with common 
usage, and are made to stand for the phenomena to which com- 
mon usage has assigned them. Our Author, for example, some- 
times employs the word reason, as he does will, reflection, con- 
science, &c, to render himself intelligible ; but our various quo- 
tations determine the sense in which they are employed. Our 
Author's meaning must be ascertained by the essential and de- 
monstrative parts of his work, not by incidental remarks made 
in compliance with the law of language. Our Author, indeed, 
fully appreciates the importance of the right use of words, hav- 
ing had a troublesome experience with others who had employed 
them in an ambiguous sense ; which leads him to say that — 

" There is no fault in philosophical discussion more pestilent 
than that of using common words in some technical or artificial 
sense, without any warning to the reader (often apparently with- 
out any consciousness on the part of the writer) that the ideas 
fundamentally involved in the use of the word are eliminated 
and set aside." 



EEIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 263 

In only one respect has our Author departed from the forego- 
ing precept, and that one is of transcendent importance. In his 
use of words relative to the Mind and Creation, he sometimes 
employs such as are of established significance, as, for example, 
Design, and Will, and Intelligence, in connection with Creation, 
while that established import is " eliminated and set aside " by 
restricting the Mind to the mechanism and functions of the brain, 
and assigning the Creation of organic beings to the forces of inor- 
ganic nature acting under a " Creative Law." In the last para- 
graph of his work, where he is treating of "Law in Politics," he 
has an apparently saving clause which, abstractedly, is quite of an 
orthodox nature, both as to a Creator and freedom of Will. Thus — 

"Our freedom is a reality, and not a name. Our faculties 
have, in truth, the relations which they seem to have to the econ- 
omy of nature. Their action is a real and substantial action on 
the constitution and cause of things. The laws of nature were 
not appointed by the great Lawgiver to baffle His creatures in 
the sphere of conduct, still less to confound them in the region 
of belief. As parts of an order of things too vast to be more 
than partly understood, they present, indeed, some difficulties 
ivMcli perplex the intellect, and a few, also, it can not be denied, 
lohich turing the heart." 

That is well enough abstractedly, although cautiously, if not 
obscurely said. But what a conflict is here between "the great 
Lawgiver and His creatures," and all that we have seen in our 
various quotations which declare the origin of living beings in 
inanimate matter through its inherent forces acting under "Cre- 
ative Law." ! ! As a summary of the whole, I repeat the fol- 
lowing : 

" If I am asked," says our Author, " whether i" believe that ev- 
ery species has been a separate creation — not born, but separately 
made — I must answer that / do not believe it. I think the facts 
do suggest to the mind the idea of the working of some Crea- 
tive Law, almost as certainly as they convince us that we know 
nothing of its nature, or of the conditions under which it does its 
glorious ivork." 

That is a clear, explicit declaration of our Author's " belief," 
and everywhere sustained by his demonstration of the "Eeign 
of Law" and of "Creation by Law." It is the whole tendency 



264 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of our Author's work. It will not answer to assume that the 
laws of nature were ordained and rendered creative by a "Law- 
giver," for that would be a mere subterfuge to reconcile the The- 
ist to the Pantheistic doctrine. It would be also equally a fatal 
blow at the foundation of all Keligion ; and in this sentiment 
there can be no doubt of the full concurrence of the religious 
world, and of no small part of the heathen — to say nothing of 
the monstrous absurdities of the doctrine, as I have already un- 
deniably shown. Neither the Acajous Crossii nor its relative 
principles have been admitted into any religious creed, notwith- 
standing the importunities of " Modern Science." Our Author 
follows in the wake of the celebrated " Vestiges of the Natural 
History of Creation. 1 '' (See p. 180.) 

But let us dispose, in the most summary manner, of any illu- 
sion that may attend the phraseology—" Creation by Law " or 
" Creative Law," and which will not be controverted by the ad- 
vocates of " Law." Law is ingrafted upon the institutions of na- 
ture, and has nothing to do with the Creative Acts of a Personal 
God ; for the interposition of His Creative Power transcends all 
law, and is a total abnegation of its operation. " Creation by 
Law," therefore, necessarily refers the origin of living beings to 
the forces of inorganic nature, .operating upon inorganic materi- 
als, and is totally exclusive of Divine agencj^. Whence it results 
that, in assigning to Law what is strictly the work of Creative 
Power, the doctrine is necessarily atheistical. 

Lamarck, another of our Author's Antitypes, after meeting 
with "some difficulties which perplex the intellect," and which 
the Laws of Nature were supposed not fully to explain, -shifts the 
responsibility upon a "Lawgiver." But Sir Charles Lyell 
shall tell us how; and the reader will observe that it is es- 
sentially not only our Author's doctrine, but of the "Vestiges 
of the Natural History of Creation," and very nearly that of 
Darwin. I shall quote Lamarck's speculations upon the diffi- 
culties which attended his original hypothesis, that it may be 
seen that its modification is virtually the Darwinian theory of 
development, but admits a creative law of low forms of organic 
beings ; -that it consists of the grossest assumptions, and that the 
difficulties alone are quite a convincing proof that organic be- 
ings were never the creatures of any Law of Nature : 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 2G5 

" The reader will immediately perceive," says Sir Charles Ly- 
ell, in referring to Lamarck, " that when all the higher orders of 
plants and animals were thus supposed to be comparatively mod- 
ern, and to have been derived, in a long series of generations, 
from those of more simple conformation, some farther hypothesis 
became indispensable , in order to explain why, after an indefinite 
lapse of ages, there were still so many beings of the simplest 
structure. Why, moreover, has the process of development acted 
with such unequal and irregular force on those classes of beings 
which have been greatly perfected, so that there are wide chasms 
in the series — gaps so numerous, that Lamarck fairly admits we 
can never expect to fill them up by future discoveries." "The fol- 
lowing hypothesis was, therefore, provided to meet these objec- 
tions. Nature is obliged to proceed gradually in all her opera- 
tions; she can not produce qnimals and plants of cdl classes at once, 
but must always begin by the formation of the most simple kinds, 
and out of them elaborate the more compound, adding to them, suc- 
cessively, different systems of organs, and multiplying more and 
more their number and energy. This nature is daily engaged in 
the formation of the elementary rudiments of animal and vege- 
table existence, which correspond to what the ancients termed 
spontaneous GENERATION. She is always beginning anew, day 
by day, the work of creation, by forming monads, or 'rough 
draughts,' which are the only living things she gives birth to di- 
rectly" "After a countless succession of generations, a small ge- 
latinous body is transformed into an oak or an ape; passing on cd 
once to the last grand step in the progressive scheme, by which 
the orang-outang, having been already evolved out of a monad, is 
made slowly to attain the attributes and dignity of man." "By 
virtue of the tendency of things to progressive improvement, the 
irrational was developed into the rational.'''' 

Such are the principal features of Lamarckism ; and, before 
presenting the following summary comment by Sir Charles, it 
may be well to say that it was made before he embraced Dar- 
win's hypothesis of development ; although, as we shall see, Sir 
Charles, at this very time, was verging closely upon it. But, as 
will appear in our thirteenth chapter, he has been an earnest ad- 
vocate of the origin of living beings in the forces and laws of in- 
organic nature, and of their progressive formation in conformity 



266 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

with the " law of extinction." He preferred the assumption of 
an abrupt and full development of species out of inorganic ma- 
terials to the organic mutations of Lamarck's hypothesis. He is, 
therefore, led to the following comment upon the rival doctrine: 

"In conclusion," says Sir Charles, "it may be proper to ob- 
serve that the above sketch of the Lamarckian theory is no ex- 
aggerated picture, and those passages which have probably excited 
the greatest surprise in the mind of the reader are literal transla- 
tions from the original." — Principles of Geology. 

In support of the violation of physical impossibilities, as 
shown in our seventh chapter, and of the Creative Law of 
the forces of inorganic nature, we have a few words from Sir 
Charles Lyell, at the close of his work on the " Geological Evi- 
dences of the Antiquity of Man " (1863). As his strongest argu- 
ment, he quotes the opinion of Dr. A^a Gray, an eminent Amer- 
ican Botanist, from his work on u Natural Selection not inconsistent 
with Natural Theology" that — 

" We may imagine that events and operations in general go 
on in virtue simply of forces communicated at the first, and with- 
out any subsequent interference, or we may hold that now and 
then, and only now and then, there is a direct interposition of the 
Deity ; or, lastly, we may suppose that $11 the changes are carried 
on by the immediate, orderly, and constant, however infinitely di- 
versified, action of the intelligent efficient Cause" 

To which Sir Charles adds that — " They who maintain that 
the origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or 
a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of the crea- 
tive cause, may retain their favorite theory compatibly with the 
Doctrine of Transmutation." ! ! 

Creation is a deceptive term as applied to the forces of inor- 
ganic nature. Its meaning is defined by the Creation of matter 
and its forces by a direct act of the Deity. The Creation of mat- 
ter by a direct act settles the meaning of the term. When em- 
ployed to represent a delegated power, it is without the shadow 
of an authority, and a delusive expedient to sustain the panthe- 
istic doctrine. 

It will be now interesting to observe how the foregoing sub- 
ject was managed by the learned two centuries ago. The cele- 
brated Eev. Dr. Henry More, of Christ's College, Cambridge, 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 2G7 

shall be our authority. In his work on the " Immortality of the 
Soul" (1659), he ascribes the origin of animals and plants to the 
laws of Nature ; and here we meet with the terms, now in use, 
"Spirit of Nature," " Soul of the World," and "Plastic Power," and 
even with the term " Quartermaster - general," which he applies 
indiscriminately to the creative power. The power is thus de- 
fined by More : 

" The Spirit of Nature is a Substance incorporeal, but without 
sense and animadversion, pervading the whole matter of the uni- 
verse, exercising a plastic power therein, according to the sundry 
predispositions and occasions in the parts it works upon ; raising 
such phenomena in the world by directing the parts of matter 
and their motions, as can not be resolved into mere mechanical 
powers." 

It is a common hypothesis that the Creative Law operated in the 
production of species of animals and plants under the special in- 
fluences of certain localities, or, as they are called, u centres or foci 
of creation ;" particularly as they are found in isolated places. 
With the plants there is no difficulty, since the reasonable pre- 
sumption is that they were simultaneously created in conformity 
with the climates which they inhabit. The same would be true 
of animals, the only difference relating to the dispersion of the 
land animals after the Flood. But who shall say that immedi- 
ately subsequent to the Flood there were not connections with 
the Asiatic continent that admitted an unlimited dispersion of 
animals, and that they instinctively settled themselves in regions 
most congenial to their nature ? (See Appendix II.) 

The opinion, however, in Theoretical Geology, expounds the 
problem by referring it to the special influences of climate upon 
the " organic law of creation." It is thus expressed by Sir 
Charles Lyell in his Geology : 

" We know nothing of the details of the various classes of the 
animal kingdom which may have inhabited the land when the 
secondary strata were accumulated ; and in regard to some of 
the more modern tertiary periods, the climate of Europe does not 
appear to have been of such a tropical character as may have been 
necessary for the development of the tribe of apes, monkeys, and 
allied genera." 

The following is also worth quoting in connection with the 



268 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

" foci of creation, " on account of its associations ; while it shows 
us how general is the dependence upon " Creative Law," or, as it 
is here called, " Organic Law of Creation," and is a good exem- 
plification of the cautious method observed by many of avowing 
spontaneity of living beings. It comes from the distinguished 
Dr. Mantell, who is said, in the journal of the London Geolog- 
ical Society for August, 1848, to have applied his collection of 
bones from New Zealand towards an illustration of "that 

DIFFICULT PROBLEM, THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES, as it has been 

emphatically termed by Sir John Herschel, the appearance and 
extinction of certain types of organic beings on the surface of 
the globe." Then follows Dr. Mantell's solution of the problem 
as suggested by the New Zealand bones. Thus — " In this point 
of view, the Age of Reptiles may be considered as merely an 
exaggerated effort of the Organic Law of Creation, which is im- 
parted to the fauna of the Galapagos Islands in a reptilian 
character." 

All this, too, is sometimes accompanied by a prodigal display 
of faith in that very Eevelation which it wounds in its most vital 
parts, and with the more dangerous pretensions that it harmon- 
izes with the Word of God. 

Various estimates have been made by Geologists of the num- 
ber of foci or central parts of the globe in which animals have 
been developed under the " Organic Law." Swainson supposes 
five; Pritchard, seven ; others .eleven. Of botanical regions De 
Candolle estimates twenty-seven, and Professor Henzlow forty- 
five, against the Mosaic one. 

The Duke of Argyll has contributed an important work to the 
cause he maintains, and it has met with distinguished favor. It 
has therefore called for a careful analysis. If it has failed in its 
object, so must all others of similar pretensions. I have endeav- 
ored to show that its whole tendency is to instill the belief that 
there is no Personal Creator and no Soul ; and it is the adroit- 
ness with which it is executed, and the fallacies which underlie 
it, and a desire that our Author should speak fully for himself, 
and also his eminence and influence, which I offer in justification 
of the extended notice bestowed upon his work. I may say, also, 
that the Mosaic Narrative of Creation may be regarded as a fic- 
tion without in the least affecting the question of an original 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 260 

Creation of all things, and of the animal kingdom in a state of 
maturity, by a Personal Creator. The narrative is a distinct 
subject ; though, if its general doctrine of the Creation of man 
and animals by a Personal Deity be rejected, and their origin be 
referred to the " working of some Creative Law," then must 
also.be rejected the concurring testimony of the Prophets, and of 
our Lord and his Apostles, and Christianity must become an illu- 
sion. All this, too, loses its interest to man if there be no other 
source of mental phenomena than what Materialism ascribes to 
the working of the brain — either a chemico-molecular action, or 
a secretory process, or a combustion of phosphorus. The Narra- 
tive of Creation has, thus far, had no direct part in my discus- 
sion of the questions before us. I have argued them upon Na- 
ture's own premises, and the admitted facts and fundamental 
principles of Science. I have shown by demonstrations which 
no Wit can invalidate that animals were not only the immediate 
work of an Omnipotent Being, but that He created them in a 
state of maturity both of mind and body. There can be, I say, 
no appeal from that demonstration ; and whoever adopts the de- 
velopmental scheme in any of its phases is necessarily involved 
in Atheism, or Pantheism, or Spinozism ; between which, how- 
ever, there is no distinction, excepting as the last two represent 
Atheism in disguise. 

If our Author, the Duke, however, can show that my inter- 
pretations of his language are not correct (should he have any 
disposition to do so), I am sure that in thus modifying its obvi- 
ous import he will render a service to all who may be disposed 
to accept his doctrines as evidently inculcate^. 

I have said that our Author occasionally appeals to the Holy 
Scriptures in support o£ his doctrines, and I have shown the 
manner in which it is done. He even calls to his aid certain 
passages relative to the mission of Christ for the salvation of 
man ; and then affirms that — 

"Whatever more there may be in such passages, they all im- 
ply the universal Eeign of Law in the moral and spiritual 
as well as in the Material world; that those laws had to be — 
behooved to be — obeyed ; and that the results are brought about 
by the adaptations of means to an end, or, as it were, by way of 
natural consequence from the instrumentality employed. This, 



270 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

however, is an idea which systematic theology regards with intense sus- 
picion." 

And well may it be so regarded; for here Christianity is 
merged in the Laws of nature, and, were there no " intense sus- 
picion," " Universal Eeign of Law " would march off in tri- 
umph, and Christianity lie prostrate before the destroyer ! All 
is on common ground — Spirit and matter — matter and Mind — all 
under common laws — taking Christianity in the general sweep, 
without regard to the mode of our Lord's Incarnation ; His own 
miracles ; the blood that was shed, as had been prophesied ; His 
Resurrection from the dead, as attested by the subsequent devo- 
tion of all the Disciples who had abandoned Him upon the Cross, 
&c. ; for, in immediate connection with the foregoing, our Author 
insists that — 

" We are perpetually reminded that the Laws of the Spiritual 
world are in the highest sense Laws of Nature, whose obli- 
gation, operation, and effect are all in the constitution and course 
of things." 

Our Author is here very consistent with his fundamental phi- 
losophy ; and the foregoing would be a legitimate induction from 
the materialistic premises that Mind is either secreted by the 
brain, according to our Author (p. 253), or the mere result of its 
chemical or molecular action. But it would not justify a sup- 
pression of the direct statements bearing upon these topics when 
appealing to an Authority which inculcates doctrines of an op- 
posite nature. Nor may we neglect, in this connection, our Au- 
thor's doctrine that — " It is impossible to describe or explain the 
facts we meet with in any branch of science without investing 
the Laws of Nature with something of that personality which 
they do actually reflect, or of conceiving of them as partaking 
of those attributes of mind which we everywhere recognize in 
their working and results." But, however cautiously the ad- 
verse statements of Eevelation may be suppressed, it is the pol- 
icy of most writers who would instill the doctrines of material- 
ism and pantheism to approach our faith in Spiritual things with 
great circumspection of language, and often, indeed, to affect an 
affiliation with that faith which they are employed in undermin- 
ing; and even to so far simulate the believer's creed as to con- 
tradict themselves. This, however, is mostly in respect to Crea- 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 271 

tion , while Materialism as to the Soul is less cautiously incul- 
cated. But in the former case a certain deference to ''systematic 
Theology " is known to be indispensable to success, and that a 
circumlocution, pointing to Creative Power, is the only expedient 
by which the doctrine of the origin of living beings in the forces 
of inorganic nature can be successfully instilled, or even insinu- 
ated. Nay, more ; so thoroughly demonstrated are the useful ef- 
fects of the Bible and of the Christian Eeligion upon the masses 
of mankind, that Atheism is constrained to admit their unquali- 
fied beneficence, and to consent to them as a basis of moral in- 
struction in the popular systems of education. 

Finally, our Author, the Duke, has an extended disquisition 
upon the Eeign of Law in Politics, but which has no relation to 
the questions before us. I may say, however, that the improve- 
ments in the arts, sciences, legislation, &c., which he subjects to 
the control of Law, are nothing more than exemplifications of 
human Eeason availing itself of progressive discoveries and im- 
provements for still farther advances. And however long they 
may be in a dormant state, it is simply owing, either to the acci- 
dental want of mental ability to convert them to still higher at- 
tainments, or to their neglect, or, as they may be brought into 
light by some still more accidental, or, perhaps, very trivial 
causes, as in the fall of an apple leading to the discovery of Grav- 
itation, or the kite to the identification of Lightning and Electrici- 
ty, and thence to Morse's Telegraph and Field's Atlantic Cable. 
We build mostly, however, upon the past. The law of human 
progress has been exemplified throughout the historical ages. 
When knowledge is lost by one nation it is perpetuated by oth- 
ers, however liable to stagnation, or perverted to the propagation 
of error. 

It will now be interesting to compare the materialistic doc- 
trines already noticed, and such as remain to be considered, with 
those which were inculcated by Spinoza two hundred years ago, 
known as Spinozism; particularly as he is said to be the first who 
reduced Atheism into a system, and formed it into a regular body 
of doctrines, ordered and connected according to the manner of 
Geometricians. For this purpose we will consult the impartial 
work entitled "A Biographical Dictionary, containing an Histor- 
ical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most 



272 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Eminent Persons," &c. (12 vols., 2d edition; London, 1784). But 
we will first look at some preliminary statements : 

" Upon the whole, we see," says his Biographer, " that Spinoza 
was a Jew by birth, a Christian through policy, and an Atheist by 
principle." "As to his Atheism, it is not, perhaps, so clear and 
evident as not to admit of disputation till after his death, when 
his Opera Posthuma put the thing out of doubt. For, although 
his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, printed at Amsterdam in 1670, 
contains all the seeds of that Atheism which was afterwards dis- 
played in his Opera Posthuma, some writers have shown clearly 
enough that Atheism was fairly deducible from the principles 
laid down in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Such strange, 
absurd, and contradictory combinations of ideas are frequently 
found to exist in the head of the same man. His Opera Posthu- 
ma, however, as we have observed, put the thing but of doubt. 

" His hypothesis was that — ' There is but one substance in na- 
ture, and that this only substance is endowed with infinite attri- 
butes, and, among others, with extension and Thought? After- 
wards he affirms that all bodies in the universe are modifications 
of that substance, as it is extended ; and that, for instance, the 
souls of men are modifications of that substance, as it thinks ; so 
that God, the necessary and most perfect Being, is the cause of 
all things that exist, but does not differ from them. He affirms 
that there is but one Being and one nature ; and that this Being 
produces in itself, and by an immanent action, whatever goes by 
the name of creatures ; that he is at once both agent and patient, 
efficient cause and subject, and produces nothing but what is his 
own modification." "The doctrine of the soul of the world, 
which was so common among the ancients, and made the princi- 
pal part of the system of the Stoics, is, at the bottom, the same 
with that of Spinoza. The first and fundamental principle of the 
two systems is manifestly the same ; and perhaps the difference, 
if there be any, would be found to consist chiefly in the different 
manner of explaining it." 

The materialistic doctrines which we have been considering — 
Materialism in its relation to Mind — the origin of living beings 
in the forces of inorganic nature, and other kindred* develop- 
mental hypotheses — and their inevitable consequence, Panthe- 
ism — have received an immense reinforcement, and no little plau- 



REIGN OF LAW.— CREATIVE LAW.— PANTHEISM. 273 

sibility, from Theoretical Geology. But the questions between us 
and Geology, and all the doctrines which bestow upon inorganic 
nature the Attributes of the Creator and such also as distin- 
guish the Soul of man, have been, and will continue to be, argued 
upon scientific, not upon Scriptural ground — not even the proof 
which will be ultimately presented in behalf of the literal inter- 
pretation of the Narratives of Creation and the Flood. Our ques- 
tions must be referred to facts, not to that Kevelation which is 
rejected, excepting as it is sustained by facts and by its own in- 
ternal proof. Nor do the questions relate to the consciences 
of men, nor how they may estimate the good or the evil of the 
"doctrines. We do but offer our criticisms and judgment upon 
them. In our opinion they not only assail Eevelation, but are 
at war with the facts and established laws of Science. These we 
defend, and the World is the Arbiter. 

18 



274 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT, 



CHAPTER IX. 

MATERIALISM, PANTHEISM, ATHEISM, PURSUED UNDER VARIOUS 
OTHER PHASES. — OPINIONS OF CHRISTIAN AND HEATHEN 
PHILOSOPHERS. 

"A Bowman took aim at an Eagle, and hit him in the heart. As the Eagle 
turned his head in the agonies of death, he saw that the Arrow was winged with his' 
own feathers. 'How much sharper,' said he, 'are the wounds made by weapons 
which we ourselves have supplied !' " — JEsop. 

Listen to the alarm which is sounded by one who has been 
long standing upon the watch-tower, and who is eminently quali- 
fied by his genius, his intercourse with the world, and his devo- 
tion to the interests of humanity, to tell us of his large experi- 
ence, and to offer words of admonition. Thus, then, Giuseppe 
Mazzini, in a letter to Edgar Quinet, as published in the New 
York Daily Tribune of May 2, 1870 : 

" This Generation has opinions, but no faith. It denies the ex- 
istence of God, of Immortality, of Love, of Eternal Promise, the 
future of those who love, the belief in Providential law, all that 
is beautiful, good, and holy in the world — a whole heroic trinity 
of religious feeling, from Prometheus to Christ, from Socrates to 
Kepler — but grovels on its knees before Comte and Buchner. 
This Generation studies passing Phenomena, but ignores the 
Causes that produce them. It admits Law, but ignores the 
Lawgiver — the form without the substance — the means without the 
end: 1 

It becomes important, therefore, to inquire extensively into the 
movements which have culminated in such a revolution in the 
civilized world, and, as far as possible, bring them to the test of 
those incontrovertible facts which universal experience recogni- 
zes, and those unquestioned principles of Science which are 
founded upon Nature, and which I have already endeavored to 
present. But to accomplish this satisfactorily to all, we must 
have before us the modus operandi through which the innova- 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 275 

tions have been wrought ; and this involves the necessity of 
calling up the principal Actors and hearing from, them their best 
ground of defense. 

"We will, therefore, first listen again to Buchner as to the Soul, 
upon which, as upon all other questions, he is sufficiently ex- 
plicit. (See Chapter VI.) In his fourth chapter, in his work 
on "Force and Matter," he says — "We shall have another op- 
portunity of establishing the identity of the laws of Thought with 
the mechanical laws of external nature, of which the former are 
merely products" 

To carry out this dogma of the "New Philosophy," there is a 
constant recurrence in the writings of the materialistic school of 
the ad captandum, the subtle catch-word — " modern science." 
And although our Author's work on Force and Matter presents 
only a wreck of the sciences, or rather a complete substitution 
of assumptions in absolute conflict with them, it is the gospel of 
the writers of the same faith who have sprung up extensively in 
England, and from whom we have the greatest mischief to ap- 
prehend in America. I shall, therefore, supply the reader with 
other citations from the work, though, of a corresponding nature 
with those already made. 

Like other writers of his school, our Author is at great pains 
to show that no force can exist without matter. This, as I have 
said, is admitted by all, so far as it relates to the physical condi- 
tion of this earth and its inhabitants. Hence it is that the Vital 
Force, being ordained for the perishable organization, when it has 
fulfilled its purpose, perishes with the structure ; and although 
the continued existence of the Soul, after its separation from the 
body, is not, like its substantive existence, while united with, the 
boclj 7 , demonstrable, yet, from what I shall say when I come to 
the demonstration of the Instinctive Principle, the Immortality 
of the Soul will follow almost as a logical consequence. A great 
parade, however, is made about the necessity of matter to force, 
as a basis for the " New Philosophy," but the premises being 
alwaj^s relative to inorganic matter. This universally conceded 
fact being duly and most tediously argued, the writers are pre- 
pared to launch their readers into the "New Philosophy." If 
the question relate to Organic Life or the Soul, the equivalence 
or identity of forces having been assumed, it follows, in the for- 



27G PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

mer case, that Organic Beings originated in a " Creative Law" of 
inorganic nature ; or, in the case of the Soul, its phenomena were 
the mere results of the workings of matter, and that when the 
body dies the force which was tributary to the phenomena re- 
sumes its former condition of caloric, or electricity, &c. If the 
origin of the universe be the question, " no matter no force " is 
put in requisition, and therefore there is no Creator of matter. 
And so with our Author, Dr. Buchner. 

"Those," he says, "who talk of a creative power, which is 
said to have produced the world out of itself (creative power), or 
out of nothing, are ignorant of the first and most simple princi- 
ple, founded upon experience and the contemplation of nature. 
[But the ' principle ' could have had no existence till nature 
was created.] How could a power have existed not manifested 
in material substance, but governing it arbitrarily according to 
individual views? Neither could separately existing forces be 
transferred to chaotic matter, and produce the world in this man- 
ner ; for we have seen that a separate existence of either is an im- 
possibility. The world could not have originated out of nothing. 
A nothing is not merely a logical, but an empirical nonentity. 
The world, or matter with its properties, which we term forces, 
must have existed from eternity, and must last forever — in one 
word, the world can not have been created" Such are the ex post 
facto assumptions — predicated of the conditions of matter after its 
creation. Again, reasoning from man's inability to annihilate 
matter — therefore, says our Author, " The immortality of matter 
is now a fact scientifically established, and can no longer be denied." 
And as substantiating the inability of any Power to effect its 
annihilation, our Author quotes the authority of the old heathen 
Empedocles (450 B.C.), who says — " They are children, or per- 
sons with a narrow sphere of vision, who imagine that any thing 
arises that has not existed before, or that any thing can entirely 
die and perish." Hence it follows that — "Indestructible, imper- 
ishable, and immortal as matter, so is also its immanent force." — 
Having shown that man can not destroy matter, our Author re- 
iterates his logic — " If matter be infinite in time, that is, immortal, 
it is also without beginning or end in space." " It was no mighty 
arm reaching down from the ether which raised the mountains, 
limited the seas, and created man and beast according to pleas- 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 277 

tire, but it was effected by the same forces which to this day 
produce hill and dale and living beings ; and all this happened 
according to the strictest necessity." — " What right," he exclaims, 
" have we to cite the present cultivated human being, standing 
upon the uppermost step of a ladder of one hundred thousand 
years, as a product of supernatural power?" And he concludes 
his disquisition upon the Soul by citing the authority of Ule, 
who says: "Deny, then, who can, that the senses are the source 
of all truth and of all error, and that the human mind is A PROD- 
UCT OF THE CHANGE OF MATTER." 

Our Author devotes a long chapter to "innate ideas," with a 
reference to the following conclusion: "If it be correct" he says, 
"that there are no innate intuitions, then must the assertion of 
those be incorrect who assume that the idea of a God, or the con- 
ception of a supreme personal being, who created and preserves 
the world, is innate in the human mind, and therefore incontro- 
vertible by any mode of reasoning." 

And as to Miracles — "We find it rather wonderful," says 
Biichner, "that so clear and acute a thinker as Ludwig Feuer- 
bach should have expended so much logic in refuting the Chris- 
tian Miracles. What founder of any religion did not deem it 
necessary, in order to introduce himself to the world, to perform 
miracles. Do not the table-spirits belong to the order of mira- 
cles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of Science " — that 
is to say, the e} r e of " Modern Science." 

And here is something particularly consolatory to the Infidel 
as well as the man of faith — " In the face of all these facts," says 
Biichner, "unprejudiced philosophy is compelled to reject the idea 
of an individual immortality, and of a personal continuance after 
death. With the decay and dissolution of its material substra- 
tum, through which alone it has acquired conscious existence 
and become a person, and upon which it was dependent, the (so- 
called) spirit must cease to exist. Experience and daily ob- 
servation teach us that the (so-called) spirit perishes with its 
material substratum — that man dies." And for the want of any 
better foundation for his conclusions, he quotes such authorities 
as the following. Thus — "'The times have been,' says Mac- 
beth, 'that when the brains were out the man would die, and 
there an end.' There never has been, and never will be, a real 



278 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

apparition. ' That the soul of a deceased person,' says Burmeis- 
ter, l does not reappear after death is not contested by rational 
people.' " "It is entirely inconceivable that a soul should exist 
without a brain. It is a fundamental principle — No matter 

WITHOUT FORCE, NO FORCE WITHOUT MATTER." 

Our Author also quotes Feuerbach more fully, who is worth 
hearing : 

" ' No one,' says Feuerbach, ' who has eyes to see, can fail to 
remark that the belief in the immortality of the soul has been effaced 
from ordinary life, and that it only exists in the subjective imagi- 
nation of individuals still very numerous.' " 

And the following monstrous misstatement occurs in connec- 
tion with the foregoing: "Among the enlightened of all nations 
and times," says Biichner, "the dogma of the immortality of the 
soul has ever had but few partisans, though they made no efforts 
obstinately to support their opinion like their opponents." Our 
Author then cites Mirabeau and Danton as his chief examples 
— the former of whom " said, on his death-bed : 1 1 shall now enter 
into nothingness ;' and the latter said : 'My residence will soon be in 
nothingness.'' " 

The following is another authority — "During the French Eev- 
olution, the celebrated Chaumette erected in the Cemeteries 
statues representing Sleep. The church-yard gates bore an inscrip- 
tion — ' Death is an eternal Sleep. 7 " 

Confucius is cited because — "He says nothing of a heavenly 
hereafter" — "Buddhism," also, "which counts two hundred mil- 
lions of disciples, knows nothing of immortality, and preaches 
non-existence as the highest object of deliverance." And our 
Author rejoices that "Tlie Mosaic doctrine never points to a re- 
ward in heaven after death." 

I shall make but one more quotation in this place, from Biich- 
ner's work on "Force and Matter." I have dwelt long upon it, 
for it is the polar star to all who navigate "the Lake where 
death and hell were cast." And that this is so will have been 
inferred from my quotations from his Letter to his English Ed- 
itor (p. 222), and especially from what we shall have seen of the 
writings of others. In parting with a Work whose popularity 
with the learned and the unlearned illustrates the spirit of the 
age, it would be unjust to his Admirers if I did not present from 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 279 

his work a good example of the manner in which Materialists 
endeavor to render their doctrine acceptable to the Spiritualist. 
Our Author thus : 

"It must certainly be admitted that the thought of an eternal 
life is more terrifying than the idea of eternal annihilation. The 
latter is by no means repugnant to a philosophical thinker. An- 
nihilation, non-existence, is perfect rest, painlessness, freedom 
from all tormenting impressions, and therefore not to be feared." 

Here let us say that, were it not that the " Light of Modern 
Science " has conducted so many others to the same conclusion, 
we should charitably conclude that our Author is a Monoma- 
niac. But does not our Author cling to Life, whatever its 
wretchedness, though relieved at least by his notoriety and suc- 
cess of his work — does he not contradict himself - 

"When he himself might his quietus make 
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear 
To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
But that the dread of something after death — 
The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveller returns — puzzles the Will, 
And makes us rather bear the ills we have 
Than fly to others which we know not of?" 

Notwithstanding Biichner's declaration that — "There is scarce- 
ly any thing printed (in Germany) in which there is not found 
some thundering denunciation of the presumptuous materialistic 
philosophy," there are a few other propagandists of the " New 
Philosophy" in that region of the world, but chiefly limited to 
half a dozen. Of these few the distinguished Microscopist, Pro- 
fessor Eudolf Virchow; is the most responsible. He finds 
nothing in microscopic cells and blood-globules that are signifi- 
cant either of a Vital Force or a Creator. We will, therefore, 
hear the best.of his reasons and facts : 

" It appears to me," he says, "that every rational Physiologist 
Who assumes an origin of life can not but deduce it from a joint ac- 
tion of chemical and physical forces." " If the history of our earth 
shows us that there was a time when no blastema [the formative 
element of simple tissues] existed, or could have existed ; when 
we see that periods arrived in which the elements combined and 
became organic forms (see Chap. VII.), what else can we infer but 



280 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that this wonder, this momentary manifestation of a Latent Law, 
happened under unusual conditions?" Granted the premises, 
" the unusual conditions must be conceded also." However, 
" We can only imagine," says Yirchow, " that at certain periods 
of the development of the Earth unusual conditions existed, un- 
der which the elements, entering into new combinations, acquired in 
statu nascente vital motions, so that the usual mechanical conditions 
ivere transformed into vital conditions." " The Law of their for- 
mation must necessarily be an Eternal Law, so that every time 
when, in the course of natural processes, the conditions are favor- 
able for its manifestation, organic formation is realized. The 
causes of this realization can only be found in a peculiar ar- 
rangement of natural relations, in an unusual conjoint action of 
the common elements, and the Vital Process must, at its first 
origin, be owing to a peculiar mode of mechanical force." 

Such is " Modern Science ;" and such, again and again, is the 
nature of the facts, and of the " New Philosophy," avowedly im- 
aginary at its very foundation, which is substituted for a Creative 
Power, in ruthless defiance of the millions of facts which pro- 
claim such a Power — to say nothing of the contempt which is 
bestowed upon the multitudinous specific evidences of a peculiar 
Vital Force, and a substantive self-acting Soul. No one of these 
evidences is admitted into the discussions in behalf of the " New 
Philosophy," whether it relate to Organic Life, or the Soul, or 
the Creator. It is, I reiterate, and I variously show that it is, 
nothing but a tissue of assumptions and imaginations, in absolute 
violation of all science, from beginning to end. (See, particu- 
larly, Chapters VI. and VII.) But I shall go on to justify these 
assertions, and to comment as I go. 

As to a Creator, Virchow's opinion is associated by Biichner 
with that of Czolbe in the following; manner: 

"'Are we,' asks Czolbe, 'a single step farther in the knowl- 
edge of the supernatural than a thousand years ago? What else 
do we possess but empty words and names.?' l Hence it follows,' 
says Virciiow, ' that man can only comprehend his own self, and 
that any thing beyond is transcendental for him.' " 

A word now as to the opinion of the Phosphoric Philosopher 
in the matter of the Soul: "The times," says Moleschott, u are 
past when Spirit was assumed to exist independently of matter. 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 281 

But the times are also passing away in which it is contended 
that spirit is degraded because it manifests itself only in matter." 
And again : " Thought is a motion of matter" — a combustion of 
phosphorus. 

VoGT goes for the doctrine of secretion — " Thought," he says, 
"stands in the same relation to the brain as bile to the liver, or 
urine to the kidneys." This is pronounced a gross comparison 
by advocates of the chemical or molecular doctrine. But why 
more than the latter; or, if Thought be a secreted product? 

" Whatever," says Burmeister, "may be said of the end of the 
world, every thing is as vague as the tradition of a beginning, 
which the childish intellect of the peoples has invented. The earth 
and the world are eternal, for this very quality belongs to the es- 
sence of matter." — "It is certain that the appearance of animal 
bodies upon the surface of the earth is an expression of such 
forces [physical forces], a function which results with mathemat- 
ical certainty from existing relations." ! ! 

The Author of the Systhne cle la Nature remarks that — "All 
unprejudiced individuals will ever feel the force of the axiom 
that out of nothing nothing can come." That is the burden of 
the argument. "Creation" he goes on, "in the sense of the Mod- 
erns, is a Theological sophism." Not so with Sir Isaac Newton, 
who also, as the " New Philosophers " probably know, wrote a 
profound work upon the Prophecies. And if his conclusion re- 
specting the time of the fulfillment of that which, declares the 
universal acceptance of Christianity be correct, that time is near 
at hand, when, as Zechariah says, these Gentiles "shall take 
hold, out of all languages of the Nations, even shall take hold of 
the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying — We will go with you, for 
we have heard that God is with you." 

Professor Baumgartner teaches, something after the manner 
of Darwin, that — " The germs of the higher animals could only he 
the eggs of lower animals. The most highly developed animals 
proceeded probably from the eggs of lower animals of the same 
class; and these, again, from a class beneath. This may have 
occurred even in Mammalia." To which an insuperable answer 
has been already rendered (Chap. VII.). 

Having now disposed of the principal European continental 
propagators of the materialistic doctrines, I am prepared to go on 



282 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

again with their conspicuous followers in Great Britain. Hu- 
man credulity, the love of what is unusual and startling, and the 
general propensity to substitute new doctrines for such as have 
stood the test of the most enlightened inquiry, and the extraor- 
dinary success of the "New Philosophy," can form the only jus- 
tification for attempting the refutation of doctrines which start 
with the spontaneous origin of living beings in the elements of 
matter, or which concede their beginning in a "cell" or other 
"primordial form," and which demand for their very foundation 
a period of time into which no inquiries can penetrate, and where 
their propagators can fabricate their assumptions of " proto- 
plasms," "cells," "gemmules," "atavism," "natural selection," 
&c, with the defiance of all contradiction as a proof of their va- 
lidity. 

Herbert Spencer, the distinguished leader of the phalanx in 
England who stand upon the foundation of the " Correlation 
and Equivalence of Forces " as alike applicable to all the phe- 
nomena of organic and inorganic nature, supplies, in his various 
writings, another startling exemplification of the atheistical tend- 
ency of that doctrine, which he adopts in its greatest latitude. 
It follows, therefore, that he reduces organic beings, in their es- 
sential nature, to a level with inorganic, and that the doctrine 
culminates in the gravest materialism. 

As our Author is a "representative" Philosopher in the so- 
called " School of Modern Science," I shall introduce his writ- 
ings rather extensively, having still in view the most substan- 
tial ground of Materialism in all its aspects, for the purpose of 
carrying out most effectually my object of showing the grossness 
of its assumptions, and that they are in conflict with the estab- 
lished facts and principles in science. He shall have no such 
cause of complaint as is alleged of others in an Appendix to his 
Second Part on the Principles of Psychology (New York edition, 
1870), of whom it is said that — 

" The misstatements made by writers who were either too 
idle to read his books, or incompetent to form estimates of them, 
he had from the beginning taken as things to he expected and en- 
dured." But our Author may not expect to propagate his doc- 
trines by extinguishing the light of criticism, as is implied by 
the following statement, that — "Neither of his last two volumes 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 283 

has been issued to the Newspapers or the Literary Journals, and 
his English publishers have now a standing order not to send 
out for review any future work of his." Very significantly, this 
Appendix is also affixed to our Author's Answer to the North 
American Review. 

I shall introduce my quotations from our Author by a general 
affirmation, a sort of test, from his Essay, the " Test of Truth" 
that the reader may see how far our Author has adhered to the 
rule which he exacts. from others. Thus — 

"Metaphysical reasoning is usually vitiated by some covert 
petitio principii. Either the thing to be proved, or the thing to 
be disproved, is tacitly assumed to be true in the course of the 
proof or disproof." And the reader will naturally consider how 
far this is applicable to all that we have hitherto seen of the 
"New Philosophy." 

Taking next his work on the '-'"Principles of Psychology '," which 
has been already before us, it will be seen that Mind is "com- 
pounded" of sensations, feelings, and emotions. Corpuscular 
motion in the brain and nerves appears as the only intellectual 
process, the only source of the phenomena of Mind, and no other 
cause to institute the motions than physical influences. I shall 
select for my quotations the most intelligible of our Author's 
language. In the following extract a parallelism is instituted 
between Mind and Matter, when nothing can be more obvious 
than the absence of all relationship between them. But it serves 
its purpose as a ground for materialism. Thus our Author : 

" The nature of Mind, as thus considered, will be elucidated by 
comparing it with the nature of Matter ; and the fact that a par- 
allelism exists between that which Chemists have established 
respecting Matter and that which we here suppose respecting 
Mind, will help to justify the conception." 

As to the " Composition of Mind" upon which our Author has 
a chapter, he remarks that — " Mind rises to what are universally 
recognized as its highest developments, in proportion as it mani- 
fests the traits characterizing Evolution in general [The glandu- 
lar organs, the liver, kidneys, &c, secrete as perfectly in infancy 
as at mature age.] A confused sentiency, formed of recurrent 
pulses of feeling having but little variety of kind, and but little 
combination, we may conceive as the nascent Mind possessed by 



284 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

those low types in which the nerves and nerve-centres are not yet 
clearly differentiated from one another or from the tissues in 
which they lie. At a stage above this, while yet the organs of 
the higher senses are rudimentary, and such nerves as exist are 
incompletely insulated, Mind is present, probably, under the form 
of a few sensations, which, like those yielded by our own viscera, 
are simple, vague, and incoherent. And from this upward, the 
mental evolution exhibits a differentiation of these simple feelings 
into the more numerous kinds which the special senses yield ; an 
ever-increasing integration of such more varied feelings with one 
another and with feelings of other kinds; an ever-increasing mul- 
tiformity in the aggregates of feelings produced; and an ever-in- 
creasing distinctness of structure in such aggregates. That is to 
say, there goes on subjectively a change 'from an .indefinite, in- 
coherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity;' par- 
allel to that re-distribution of matter and motion which consti- 
tutes Evolution as objectively displayed." 

The following is a fair example of the manner in which Mind 
is supposed to be evolved by molecular changes in the brain, thus 
placing the Mind as the consequent, and not the antecedent of the 
u molecular change." Thus — 

" The degree of revivability of a feeling depends, in part, on the 
extent to which the nervous centre concerned was capable of un- 
dergoing much molecular change, and evolving much of the concom- 
itant feeling, when the original excitation was received. Several 
factors co-operate to determine its capability. A complete state 
of repair is one of them. An active circulation is another. A 
blood rich in the materials required both for disintegration and 
integration is a third. The respective shares of these factors can 
not be determined; for the three usually vary together." Again: 
" Other things being equal, a given past feeling may be brought 
into consciousness vividly, faintly, or not at all, according as the 
nervous centre concerned is or is not ivell repaired and well sup- 
plied with blood at the moment the remembrance is suggested." 
"That strong environing actions generate feelings which are more 
distinctly revivable than those generated by weak environing 
actions, is also a fact inferable from physiological premises. For, 
as strong environing actions produce strong nervous discharges 
and great amounts of those central molecular changes of ivhich feel- 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 285 

ings are the correlatives, it is obvious that they must produce, 
in high degrees, those structural changes, whatever they may be, 
to ivhich the revivability of the feelings is due.'''' 

The foregoing quotations require no farther comment than that 
with which they were introduced. The following paragraph is 
intended to show us how the brain regulates mental associations. 
But the reader should keep in mind that all that is said of molec- 
ular actions, nervous changes, nervous discharges, is mere as- 
sumption, and that we know nothing of the manner in which the 
brain is tributary to mental processes. Our Author thus : 

"The associability of feelings with those of their own kind, 
group within group, corresponds to the general arrangement of 
nervous structures into great divisions and subdivisions. The 
central feelings arise within the great cerebral masses ; and the 
subjective connection shown in the instant association of each 
with its class answers to the objective connection between one 
set of nervous actions occurring in these great masses and sets 
of nervous actions that have occurred in the same masses. The 
peripheral feelings, again, initiated by disturbances upon or within 
the body, have their seat in the subjacent nervous mass or masses, 
hut probably the medulla oblongata is the sole sensational centre; 
and the classing of one of these feelings with sensations in gen- 
eral instead of with emotions, answers to the connection between 
one nervous change in this subjacent mass and other nervous 
changes in it." 

Throughout the work on the "Principles of Psychology," we 
meet with no allusion to a Principle or Essence known as the 
Soul or Mind by the opponents of Materialism — nothing but 
brain and nerves and molecular action, and exciting causes of a 
physical nature. But let us hope for something more encour- 
aging in some other of our Author's writings — his "First Princi- 
ples" for example. But here he says that — 

" The Forces which we distinguish as Mental come within the 
same generalization [as the external physical forces]. Yet there is 
no alternative but to make the assertion." " Besides the Corre- 
lation and Equivalence between external physical forces and the 
Mental Forces generated by them in us under the form of sensa- 
tions, there is a Correlation and Equivalence between sensation 
and these physical forces, which, in the shape of bodily actions, 



286 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

result from them." "And how, it may be asked, can we inter- 
pret by the law of Correlation the genesis of those thoughts and 
feelings which, instead of following external stimuli, arise spon- 
taneously?" "The forces called vital, which we have seen to 
be correlates of the forces called physical, are the immediate 
SOURCES of those thoughts and feelings, AND ARE expended in 
producing- them. [No other Soul.] It is a conspicuous fact 
that mental action is contingent on the presence of a certain nerv- 
ous apparatus. Further, this apparatus has a particular chem- 
ical constitution on which its activity depends, and there is one ele- 
ment in it between the amount of which and the amount of func- 
tion performed there is an ascertained connection, the proportion 
of Phosphorus present in the brain being the smallest in infancy, 
old age, and idiocy, and the greatest during the prime of life." 
But I may say that there is no foundation whatever for the al- 
leged disproportion of that luminous element. (See Analysis, &c, 
Chap. VI.. VII.). As to Moleschott's dogma—" Without Phos- 
phorus there is no Thought," Liebig turns it into ridicule, and is 
inclined to think, upon that hypothesis, the bones should be re- 
garded as the source of thought, since they contain four hun- 
dred times more phosphorus than the brain. But it is very 
probable that there are varying proportions of different elements 
not only in the brain but in all the organs during their progress 
towards a state of maturity. But this supplies no proof that the 
brain is not the seat of a Soul. It only shows that a certain ma- 
turity of the organ is necessary to the active operations of Eea- 
son ; and this was never doubted. The assumption is simply 
equivalent to saying that, loithout brain no Thought Moreover, 
there is no reliance to be placed upon the chemical analyses of 
which the foregoing assumption is predicated ; according to the 
admissions of organic Chemists. 

But the Author of the phosphorus doctrine should have ad- 
hered more consistently to the facts and principles of Chemistry. 
The combustion of phosphorus arises from its union with oxygen 
gas, and alwaj^s terminates in one wa}^.. If oxygen, therefore, 
unite in the manner supposed with the phosphorus of the brain, 
it can form no other compound than phosphorous or phosphoric 
acid ; or, if the oxygen combine with the carbon or the hj^drogen 
of the brain, the resulting compounds must be carbonic acid in 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 287 

one case, and water in the other ; or at most, a special triple com- 
pound of those elements. A similar demonstration is applicable 
to all the purely physical processes of the brain whose results 
have been so absurdly exalted from their established physical 
conditions to the generation of the phenomena of Mind. 

To go on with our Author. In his work on Psychology, he 
has a similar interpretation of the Emotions as we have seen of 
Thought ; though he appears to make no distinction between 
them. Thus — 

" The centres which are the seats of the Emotions undergo 
disintegration in the genesis of Emotions ; and, other things re- 
maining equal, thereupon become less capable of generating 
Emotions until they are reintegrated." 

There is much in our Author's works of what we have just 
seen about the Correlation of Sensations and external influences. 
But suppose that the brain itself and alone perceives the impres- 
sions — sees, hears, feels — what is it, I reiterate, that contemplates 
the beauties of a landscape in all its minutest details, and with 
emotions of delight, perhaps of reverential awe? What carries 
on the long train of reflections that have been instituted by some 
momentary impression upon the brain through the avenue of 
the Senses? Where shall we look for an exciting cause of those 
reflections that are at our command for hours, days, and years 
after the sensations have ceased to operate? Or where for an 
exciting cause of the reproduction in our Minds of the knowl- 
edge that is independent of sensation ? Or where for the Actor's 
ability to repeat, from memory, all the Plays of Shakspeare? 
Are all the things of past sensations, all our acquired knowl- 
edge, engraven upon the brain ? — for so it must be if there be 
any truth in Materialism. Sensation is, of course, a favorite 
starting-point with the Materialist ; but all ground, even for 
sophistry, being removed when he comes to the processes of 
Reason, where there is no apparent cause to initiate a single idea, 
he plants himself upon the self-originating "molecular action" 
which he violently predicates analogically of that hypothetical 
" molecular action " in other organs which, if it have any exist- 
ence bej 7 ond the vital decomposition of organs, he admits. is ex- 
cited by the blood! But assumptions are our Author's only means 
of escape from the interrogatory which he anticipates — 



•288 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

" How, it may be asked, can we interpret by the law of Cor- 
relation the genesis of those thoughts and feelings which, instead of 
following external stimuli, arise spontaneously ?" To which he 
responds — " The forces called vital which we have seen to be 
correlates of the forces called physical, are the immediate sources 
of those thoughts and feelings, and are expended in producing 
them." 

Here we have the common physical forces of external nature, 
acting as vital forces' in instituting cerebral action, assigned as 
" the immediate source of spontaneous thought and feelings," just 
as they are assumed to act in the production of bile, sweat, &c. 
Bat mark, in the latter case the blood is an indispensable excit- 
ing cause of the vital force, while no exciting cause of the forces 
is assigned in the case of the Mind, but, like the Soul, we are left 
to suppose them self-acting. Moreover, our Author's inconsist- 
ency becomes more surprising when it is considered that he tri- 
umphantly produces an exciting cause of the same forces for an- 
other class of thoughts and feelings — namely, sensation arising 
from impressions made upon the brain by physical influences 
propagated through the senses. He goes on to enforce the doc- 
trine of Materialism by a variety of pure assumptions, as follows: 

" Various classes of facts unite to prove that the Law of meta- 
morphosis which holds among physical forces holds equally be- 
tween those and the Mental forces. Those modes of the unknow- 
able which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, &c", are 
alike transformable into each other and into those modes of 
the Unknowable which we distinguish as Sensation, Emotion, 
Thought ; these, in their turn, being directly and indirectly re- 
transformable into the original shapes." 

The same doctrine of force is carried by our Author into all 
the affairs and conditions of Life ; and the very force expended 
by a horse or a roaring hurricane may become the source of our 
Thoughts, Emotions, &c. Thus our Author : 

"Not only is the force expended by the horse harnessed to 
the plough, and the laborer guiding it, derived from the same 
reservoir as is the force of the falling cataract and the roaring 
hurricane ; but to this same reservoir are eventually traceable the 
subtler manifestations of force which human society, as socially 
constituted, evolves. 11 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 289 

But such is not the end of the doctrine of the " Correlation 
and Conservation of Forces;" for it is employed, as we have 
already seen, to beguile Mankind into a rejection of the Deity, 
and our Author joins in this enterprise, as will appear from the 
following declaration, which, for the sake of the disinterested 
opinion that accompanies it, I take from the New York Evan- 
gelist of September 23, 1869, where it stands as an isolated 
paragraph. Thus — 

"A DISTINCT AVOWAL. 

" No one need read Herbert Spencer with any doubt of the fact that in so doing 
he steps into a poisonous atmosphere, against whose careless inhalation he should be 
on his guard. There is no necessity of testing it to detect its character. Mr. Spencer, 
in a late article, labels his infidelity in plain English himself. He says — ' The abso- 
lute commencement of Organic Life on the globe I distinctly deny. The affirmation 
of universal evolution is in itself the negation of an absolute commencement of any 
thing.'" 

The following is even a more " distinct avowal." — "Is it sup- 
posed," he says, "that a new organism when created is created 
out of nothing ? But this supposes the creation of matter, and 
the creation of matter is inconceivable. It implies a relation be- 
tween something and nothing, an idea that can not be formed 
into coherent thought." Those who think they believe it "do 
not really believe, but rather believe that they believe." He re- 
gards the doctrine as " worthless and absurd." 

The foregoing quotations remind us of our Author's answer 
to the North American Review, a pamphlet entitled "Spontane- 
ous Generation" in which he denies the grave impeachment of 
advocating that doctrine. But the quotation from the Evan- 
gelist, which, remarkably enough, appears in almost the same 
words in the Answer to the Review, goes even farther than gen- 
eration, and shows us how much denials are worth when an odi- 
ous doctrine is designated by a name that is intelligible to the 
multitude. But our Author's Answer is so much of a literary 
curiosity, and embraces so admirable a definition of Spontaneous 
Generation, taking " Modern Science " for its basis, and conveys 
so exactly our Author's faith in spite of his denial, that I shall 
present its gist to the reader; and farther,. also, that it may be 
compared with the demonstrations which I have made against 
the doctrine. Of course, as I have shown (p. 187), Chemistry has 

19 



290 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

manufactured no such Organic Compounds as our Author sup- 
poses, and which forms the scientific basis of the doctrine which 
he acknowledges. But granting this to be true, it will not affect 
in the least the hypothesis of Spontaneous Generation. The co- 
alescence of an element with an inorganic or binary compound, 
or inorganic compounds with each other, and resulting in ternary, 
quaternary, &c, compounds, and ultimately in complex living 
beings, is just as much an act of Spontaneous Generation or 
Spontaneity of Living Beings (for they are equivalent terms), as 
the doctrine which begins altogether with the elements of matter. 
There is no difference whatever between them. In all the cases 
the union is of inorganic substances, and is necessarily assumed 
to be effected through the properties or forces of inorganic mat- 
ter, which are then said to become correlated or metamorphosed 
into vital force and mental force. But here is our Author to 
speak for himself. Thus— 

" The conception of a first organism, in any thing like the 
current sense of the words, is wholly at variance with concep- 
tion of evolution." " That organic matter was not produced all 
at once, but was reached through steps, we are well warranted in 
believing by the experiences of Chemists. [! ! !] Organic matters 
are produced in the laboratory by what we may literally call ar- 
tificial evolution. Chemists find themselves unable to form those 
complex combinations directly from their elements; but they suc- 
ceed in forming them indirectly, by successive modifications of 
simpler combinations. In some binary compound, one element 
of which is present in several equivalents, a change is made by 
substituting for one of these equivalents an equivalent of some 
other element ; so producing a ternary compound. Then anoth- 
er of the equivalents is replaced, and so on." The foundation 
being thus laid by the Chemist, Mr. Spencer has no difficulty in 
resolving that " Mystery of Mysteries, Organic Life" and thus, 
also, placing Theoretical Geology under the highest obligations 
to Chemistry. The following is his luminous exposition : 

" The progress towards higher types of organic molecules is ef- 
fected by modifications upon modifications ; as throughout Evolu- 
tion in general. Each of these modifications is a change of the 
molecule into equilibrium with its environment — an adaptation, 
as it were, to new surrounding conditions to which it is sub- 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 291 

jected ; as throughout Evolution in general. Larger, or more in- 
tegrated, aggregates (for the compound molecules are such) are 
successively generated ; as throughout Evolution in general. More 
complex or heterogeneous aggregates are so made to arise, one 
out of another ; as throughout Evolution in general. A geometri- 
ca%-increasing multitude of those larger and more complex 
aggregates so produced at the same time results; as throughout 
Evolution in general. It is by the action of the successively high- 
er forms on one another, joined with the action of environing 
conditions, that the highest forms are reached ; as throughout 
Evolution in general" " In the early world, AS IN THE MODERN 
laboratory, inferior types of organic substances, by their mu- 
tual actions under fit conditions, evolved the superior types of 
organic substances, ending in organizable protoplasm. And it 
can hardly be doubted that the shaping of organizable proto- 
plasm, which is a substance modifiable in multitudinous ways 
with extreme facility [chemically], went on after the same man- 
ner." 

Such, then, is the only proper meaning of " Spontaneous 
Generation ;" and if our Author chooses to give to it some other 
interpretation, his own doctrine is the most materialistic axid pan- 
theistic that can be devised. " Words," says Lord Bacon, " are 
often like a Tartar's bow which, shoots backward, and so some- 
times tangle the judgment of those who use them." Nor will 
the assumption of a scientific foundation, and placing Chemistry 
on an equality with Creative Power, save our Author from the 
horn of the dilemma upon which he has impaled himself. But 
he has only expounded a doctrine which lies at the basis of The- 
oretical Geology — " the typical system " or progressive develop- 
ment of living beings from the lowest to the highest. Any 
farther comment here is superseded by what has been already 
said, particularly in our Seventh Chapter, of the absolute con- 
flict with the fundamental facts and laws of Nature of every doc- 
trine relative to the origin of organic beings that departs from 
the Mosaic. 

I now return to our Author's "First Principles," from which 
we have seen how he prepares*the reader for a final plunge into 
Atheism ; and the same foundation is laid in other writings. 
Examples of this may be derived from his " Principles of Biol- 



292 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ogy," which I shall quote liberally, not only in justice to the em- 
inent Author, but that my readers may appreciate the nature 
of the facts and arguments of this Eepresentative of the "New 
Philosophjr." Thus, then, speaking after the manner of Theo- 
retical Geology, he says — 

"Besides the types [of organic beings] that have persisted from 
ancient eras down to our own era, other types have from time to 
time made their appearance in the ascending series of our strata 
— types of which some are lower and some higher than the 
types previously recorded ; but whence these new types came, and 
whether any of them came by divergences from the previously 
recorded type, the evidence does not yet enable us to say." 

And here is an argument for " the affirmation of universal ev- 
olution." — "Passing," he says, "to distributions in time, there 
arises the question — Why, during nearly the whole of the vast 
period geologically recorded, have there existed none of those 
highest organisms which have now overrun the earth? [We 
shall see that such did exist.] How is it that we find no traces 
of a creature endowed with large capacities for knowledge and 
happiness? The answer that the Earth was not, in remote 
times, a Jit habitation for such creatures, besides being unwar- 
ranted by the evidence, suggests the equally awkward question, Why 
during untold millions of years did the Earth remain unfit for 
inferior creatures ?" — in which I cordially agree. 

And yet another step — " The hypothesis that living beings re- 
sulted from special creations being & primitive hypothesis [Mosaic], 
is probably an untrue hypothesis. If the interpretations of Nature 
given by aboriginal men were erroneous in other directions, they 
were most likely to be erroneous in this direction." "It belongs 
to a family of beliefs ivhich have, one after another, been destroyed by 
advancing knowledge." " It is a belief that is not countenanced by a 
single fad. 11 (See Chapter VII.) And here is our Author's char- 
acteristic argument: "No one ever saw a special creation, no one 
ever found proof of an indirect hind that a special creation had 
taken place." (See, again, Chapter VII.) " The old Hebrew idea 
that God takes clay and moulds a creature as a potter might mould 
a vessel, is probably too grossly absurd to be accepted by any mod- 
ern defender of the special creation doctrine. But having aban- 
doned this crude belief, what belief is he prepared to substitute?" 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 293 

" If divine power is demonstrated by the simple creation of each 
species, would it not have been still tetter demonstrated by the sep- 
arate creation of each individual '?" "The beliet that all organic 
forms have arisen in conformity with uniform Laws, instead of 
breaches of uniform laws, is a belief that has come into existence 
in the most instructed class, living in these better instructed times." 

In his " First ^Principles," our Author remarks that — "The 
Law of organic evolution is the Law of all evolution, whether it be 
in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon 
its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Man- 
ufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art." 
" Manifestly, this community of results implies community of cau- 
sation. It may be that of such causation no account can be 
given," &c. And our Author very justly concludes that — 

"Men who have not risen above that vulgar conception which 
unites with matter the epithets of 'gross' and l brute,' may natu- 
rally enough feel dismay at the proposal to reduce the phenom- 
ena of Life, Mind, and Society to a level with those which they 
think so degraded." 

And yet we have just seen the most debasing assault upon this 
same matter, as well as upon the Creator, with the very epithets 
now thrust in our faces, in our Author's declaration that — 

"The old Hebrew idea that God takes clay and moulds a crea- 
ture as a potter might mould a vessel, is too grossly absurd to 
be accepted by any modern defender of the special creative doc- 
trine." 

And now another climax — a primordial cell, and its "evolution 
into living beings" — defining how the " affirmation of universal 
evolution is, in itself, the negation of an absolute commencement 
of any thing ;" however inconsistent this may be with what we 
have just seen of our Author's flounderings in the creative pre- 
tensions of the Chemist. Thus, in his " Biology " — 

" If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man 
in the space of a few years [that is to say, through the established 
course of generation], there can surely be no difficulty in under- 
standing how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the 
course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human 
race." 

" Under appropriate conditions, for untold millions of years," 



294 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

is an argument worthy of such a cause. Such, precisely, also, is 
the ground of Darwin's " Origin of Species " — the only cause as- 
signed being " untold millions of years." For the present, I ask 
the reader whether he can imagine any other " appropriate con- 
ditions" for the development of the human cell or ovum than 
that precise complex organism which has been designed with a 
special reference to a mature development of the cell in the space 
of nine months ? And whether, also, he can imagine any other 
" appropriate " nourishment for the growth and development of 
that cell than the human blood, and supplied as in the existing 
manner? And then as to the nutritive qualities of inorganic 
matter, and the fostering, motherly care of the destructive forces 
of inorganic nature, see Chapter VII. I may now, also, con- 
vict our Author and his school of the " New Philosophy," upon 
their own premises, of the most palpable violation of their fun- 
damental principles. They insist upon an established uniformi- 
ty of the laws of Nature, and that under these laws the whole 
organic kingdom has been developed, either from the elements 
of matter, or from a primordial form or cell. . How happens it, 
.then, that there now exists a totally different set of laws for the 
generation and development of animals and plants? Why have 
not the laws of inorganic. nature, as it respects their assumed cre- 
ative function, maintained their "established uniformity" instead 
of undergoing a total transmutation, or, as our Author expresses 
it, "breaches of uniform laws?" Or, equally absurd and fatal to 
the developmental hypotheses is the assumed co-existence of the 
two contradictory classes of laws ; one for the production of ani- 
mals and plants out of the elements of matter, or a given primor- 
dial cell, by the laws of inorganic nature, and another for the 
generation and development of a cell by the laws of organic na- 
ture. (See the old heathen doctrine, p. 240.) What shadow 
of analogy, I again say, is there between such a wonderful and 
elaborate system of consummate Design as is provided for the 
perpetuation of animals and plants, ingrafted upon the whole or- 
ganic mechanism, and the riotous, destructive forces of inorganic 
nature — through "untold millions of years" — and without con- 
tributing to the development of animals a particle of nourish- 
ment. (See Chapter VII.) And yet such is a fundamental 
ground in the "New Philosophy" — this monstrous assumption 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 295 

shocking the scientific mind as well as the common dignity of 
human nature, in the writings of all who aspire at a rank in the 
"New Philosophy," or as otherwise disguised under the name 
of "modern science."' As it relates to our Author, it reminds 
one, also, of his more direct method of disposing of the Deity 
than we have yet seen. In his " First Principles," Mr. Spencer 
says that — 

"As writes Mr. Mansel — l It is our duty, then, to think of God as 
personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite? — That 
this is not the conclusion here adopted needs -hardly be said. Our 
duty is to submit ourselves with all humility to the established 
limits of our intelligence, and not perversely to rebel against 
them." 

In "all humility" I rejoice that, in common with all believers 
in a God, I have no more doubt of His Personality than I have 
of my own. And I have already argued, apart from Eevelation, 
the Personality of a Spiritual God upon the same ground as the 
personality of a human, being (Chap. VIII.). If a God have an 
existence, His Individuality, and therefore His Personality, is as 
absolute as that of man. Hence, to deny His Personality is a 
direct avowal of atheism, whatever prevarication may be em- 
ployed. The term is just as applicable to immaterial existences 
as to material. 

The spirit of the foregoing sentiment pervades our Author's 
writings ; and it rouses 'one's faith to indignation on observing 
how he satirizes the believer in a God, and even the Deity Him- 
self, while affecting an admission of such a Being for the very 
purpose of destroying that belief. Thus, in his " Principles of 
Biology"- 

"We have the most unmistakable proof that throughout all 
past time there has been a perpetuafrpreying of the superior on 
the inferior animals — a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the 
strong. How is this to be explained ? How happens it that 
animals were so designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? 
How happens it that in almost every species the number of indi- 
viduals annually born is such that the majority die of starvation, 
or by violence after arriving at maturity ?" " Whoever contends 
that each kind of animal was especially designed must assert either 
that there was a deliberate intention on the part of the Creator to 



296 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

produce these results, or that there was an inability to prevent 
them. Which alternative- does he prefer ? To cast an imputa- 
tion upon the Divine character, or assert a limitation o§> the 
Divine power ?"* 

The same interrogatories and the same objections are equally 
applicable to the creation of man — nay, more so on account of 
his Eeason. Why was he created with a disposition, or with the 
ability, to rebel against his Creator, and this, too, at his very en- 
trance upon existence? Why, to butcher each other? Why, 
like the cannibals, to eat each other? Why destined to sorrow 
and suffering, though not exactly "as the sparks fly upward?" 
Why are " the nations as a drop in the bucket, and counted as a 
small dust in the balance?" And, most remarkable of all, why 
does the Creator indulge His rational creatures in attempts to 
reason Himself out of existence ? Nor is the blasphemy in the 
least degree mitigated by referring the origin of living beings to 
the laws of nature, so long as a Creator is admitted to have en- 
dowed those laws with a creative power. " Qui facit per aliurn, 
facit per se." From which it again follows that our Author and 
his school entertain no belief in a Creator. And this is suffi- 
ciently obvious from the inconsistent manner in which he would, 
by this mode of reasoning, entrap the unwary reader. We have 
already had the bait — here is the trap : 

" That sentiment which the doctrine of special creations is 
thought necessary to satisfy is much better satisfied by the doc- 
trine of Evolution [through 'untold millions of years'], since this 
doctrine raises no contradictory implications respecting the Unknown 
Cause, such as are raised by the antagonistic doctrine." 

" Unknown^ Cause " is a most appropriate designation for 
such an hypothesis, without even the merit of the " devotions, 
and the altar, and the TJn%town God " of the Athenians. But 
let us see how far the terms of our Author's philosophy are con- 
sistent ; for it is important that the confiding reader (for whose 

* Buchner has similar arguments in the way of interrogatories. Thus — " Who 
would seriously maintain that the earth could not have been more comfortable for 
man ? With what difficulties must he not struggle until he renders a little spot fit for 
a dwelling-place, &c. No being can have been destined to live merely for the good 
man. All that lives has an equal right to exist ; and it is merely the right of might 
which permits man to kill other living beings." 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 297 

benefit, particularly, I am writing) should understand the nature 
of the precipice to which he has been conducted. In doing this, 
I will adopt our Author's Socratic style of interrogatories. I 
ask him, then, to explain the difference between a Creator who, 
"with deliberate intention, or from inability to do otherwise," 
created animals of ferocious disposition " to prey upon the infe- 
rior, the strong to devour the weak, or to die of starvation " (in- 
cluding man in the category), and a Creator who, with the same 
"deliberate intention, or from an inability to do otherwise," so 
endowed the material world with forces and " uniform laws reflecting 
intelligence" as to develop man and animals with those same fe- 
rocious dispositions, and the same liabilities to starvation, ship- 
wreck, carnage, suffering, and certain death ? " Which alterna- 
tive does our Author prefer ? To cast an imputation upon the 
Divine Character" for having so created man and animals, or 
so contrived a set of " uniform laws " that produced the same re- 
sults, or " assert a limitation of Divine Power " in either of these 
particulars ? The same " contradictory implications respecting 
the unknown cause" obtain equally in either case. "Which horn 
of the dilemma, I say, will our Author choose ? For upon one 
or the other he has impaled himself. Our Author, however, is 
only a Eepresentative of a powerful School, whom I employ as 
its Interpreter. But I will no farther criticise his alternative, and 
will conclude my answer to his interrogatories in the language 
of a high Authority, which I can not doubt will prove very sat- 
isfactory. 

" My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 
My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than 
the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My 
thoughts than your thoughts," and so on to the end of the 
chapter. 

But let us hear our representative Author a little farther upon 
this interesting topic. He tells us that — "We everywhere see 
fading away the anthropomorphic conception of the unknown- 
Cause. In one case after another is abandoned that interpreta- 
tion which ascribes the phenomena to a Will analogous to the 
human Will." 

Here our Author brings up a question of vital importance — 
that of reasoning from ourselves to the Deity: " We everywhere 



298 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

see fading away the anthropomorphic conception of the Unknown 
Cause" &c* 

The first comment suggested is, that the epithet anthropomor- 
phic^ as here applied, is acknowledged by the Believer only in 
its relation to Mind ; and I fully disposed of it when arguing the 
Spirituality and Personality of God (Chap. YIIL). The main 
point of consideration relates to the assault upon our only mode 
of obtaining a knowledge of the " Unknown Cause," independ- 
ently of Eevelation. By reasoning from our own Will to the 
Will of the "Unknown," by reasoning from our own designs, our 
own conceptions of virtue, goodness, love of our fellow-creatures, 
and by extending the elements of our Eeason to infinity, we ob- 
tain as clear a conception of the Supreme Being as we have of 
ourselves. The constitution of our Minds represents the. "Im- 
age of God," not our bodies. And all this, too, without the 
slightest " anthropomorphic " grossness. 

But the Infidel rejoins — You shall carry along the evil with, 
the good, and impute to your God the vices and infirmities as 
well as the virtues and intellectual characteristics of mankind. 
You must reason to your God "as well from the former as the 
latter, and extend them all to infinity. You must admit that 
He was either cruel in creating man and animals with combative 
dispositions, or that He was unable to do otherwise. As to De- 
signs, they must be weighed along with the alternative here pre- 
sented. 

The credulous and confiding are confounded by the sophistry. 
They shrink from the dark side of the alternative. They close 
the Sacred Volume in the very face of the historical Prophets 
and Apostles, and in helpless imbecility they "say in their 
hearts there is no God !" 

Another important Authority in the School of the "New 
Philosophy " is Professor John Tyndall, whose Address at 
the meeting of the British Scientific Association, 1868, I have 
already freely quoted in regard to his identification of organic 
and inorganic beings as it respects their essential nature; and we 

* " Ludwig Feuerbach," says Biichner, "calls all conceptions of God and di- 
vinity Anthropomorphisms — that is, products of human fancies and perceptions, formed 
after the model of human individuality." It is probably from this source our Author 
derives his sarcastic epithet. 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 299 

will now hear him, from the same Address, on the questions just 
before us. No comment, however, is required upon the follow- 
ing statement : 

"If you ask the Materialist whence is this 'matter' of which 
we have been discoursing, who or what divided it into molecules, 
who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into 
Organic Forms, he has no answer. Science is also mute in reply 
to these questions. But if the Materialist is confounded and sci- 
ence rendered dumb, who else is entitled to answer f To whom has 
the secret been revealed? Let us lower our heads and ACKNOWL- 
EDGE our ignorance, one and all. Perhaps the mystery may 
resolve itself into knowledge at some future day. The process 
of things upon this earth has been one of amelioration. It is a 
long tuay from the Iguanodon and his cotemporaries to the Pres- 
ident and Members of the British Association. And whether 
we regard the improvement from the scientific or from the the- 
ological point of view, as the result of progressive development 
or as the result of successive exhibitions of creative energy, 
neither view entitles us to assiime that man's present faculties end 
the series — that the process of amelioration stops at him. A time 
may, therefore, come when this ultra scientific region by which 
we are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human 
investigation." " Rays may now be darting which require but 
the development of the proper intellectual organs to translate them 
into hnoivledge as far surpassing ours as ours does that of the wal- 
loiving reptiles which once held possession of this planet." 

And all this without even the ability to surmise — " Who or 
What impressed upon the molecules of matter the necessity of run- 
ning into Organic Forms.' 1 ! ! Nevertheless, we are encouraged be- 
yond Darwin himself, that a higher race" of beings may yet be 
developed with " intellectual organs that will translate them into 
a knowledge " of " Who or What " was the Author of " the mys- 
tery of mysteries " — nay more, of " whence is this mattery 

Let us, next, again interrogate Professor T. H. Huxley, now 
President (1869) of the "British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science." Whatever exposition, therefore, this repre- 
sentative Author may make in behalf of Materialism must be re- 
garded, like the writings of the Authorities already cited, as em- 
bracing the most substantial facts and arguments that the inge- 



300 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

nuity of man has yet invented. For the intended purpose I shall 
introduce the following extracts from the Yale College edition of 
onr Author's celebrated Lecture on the " Physical Basis of Life " 
(1868), already quoted (with an Introduction, according to the 
College Advertisement, by a Professor of the College) ; and of 
which the New York Evening Post, of May 10, 1869, remarks 
that — ■ 

"It may be considered rather ' strong meat'' for College circula- 
tion, as the tendency of Professor Huxley's argument is to show 
that the Soul of man, if he have any, is but the product of phys- 
ical organization — is a series of actions and states of the brain 
and nervous system." 

We have already had this distinguished writer before us, par- 
ticularly in our fourth chapter, in connection with the question 
now under consideration ; and the citations there should be 
taken along with the following facts and arguments. The Pres- 
ident farther says that — 

"A solution of. smelling salts in water, with an infinitesimal pro- 
portion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary 
bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm ; but, as I 
need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep ^hungry 
man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from 
a like fate. An animal can not make protoplasm, but must take 
it ready made from some other animal, or some plant. In seek- 
ing for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the 
vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic acid, water, and 
ammonia [the 'smelling salts'], which offers such a Barmecide 
feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of 
plants; and with a clue supply of only such materials, many a 
plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply 
until it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the 
quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed." "Plants 
are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and 
dispense. But it will be observed that the existence of the matter 
of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds, name- 
ly, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of 
these three from the world, and air vital phenomena come to an 
end. They are related to the protoplasm of the plant as the pro- 
toplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 301 

oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon 
and oxygen unite in certain proportions, and under certain con- 
ditions, to give rise to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen pro- 
duce water ; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These 
new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are 
composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together un- 
der certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex 
body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of 
life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complica- 
tion, and I am unable to understand why the language which is 
applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any 
of the others." 

Here is our Author's first fallacy. "He sees no break in the 
series of steps in molecular complication," but jumbles together 
the union of two elements into lifeless binary compounds in vir- 
tue of their own inherent physical properties, and the union of 
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, into a quadruple living 
compound in virtue of the organization and vital properties of 
the plant, and which nothing can effect but that living organiza- 
tion. And yet is this utter perversion of facts regarded as a 
very conclusive demonstration of the common nature of organic 
and inorganic beings. But this is only a demonstrative step to 
the higher branch of materialism. Before reaching that climax, 
however, our Author has something more of the same delusive 
reasoning as to the common nature of inorganic matter and liv- 
ing beings. He goes on to say that : 

" We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, 
hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and 
activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of 
which they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed 
in a certain proportion, and the electric spark is passed through 
them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight 
to the sum of their weights, appears in their place. There is not 
the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the 
water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given 
rise to it." " Nevertheless, we call these and many other strange 
phenomena the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate 
to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the prop- 
erties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume 



302 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that a something called aquosity entered into and took possession 
of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then 
guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of the 
crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost." 

All of which is very true. But, still ignoring the elaborate or- 
ganization of plants and all their unique phenomena, but admit- 
ting that no organic compound can be formed out of the ele- 
ments of matter excepting by that organization, the foregoing 
reasoning is again violently applied in the manner already seen. 
Thus— 

" Does any body quite comprehend the modus operandi of an 
electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydro- 
gen ? What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the ex- 
istence in the living matter of a something which has no representative 
or correlative in the not living matter which gave rise to it t What 
better philosophical status has ' Vitality ' than Aquosity ?" 

Now it is conceded by our Author, and by most Materialists, 
that plants alone can organize mineral substances into com- 
pounds as simple as protoplasm, and therefore there could have 
been no organic compound as simple as that substance till the 
appearance of plants ; and therefore, also, there could have been 
no plants unless created by a Power superior to nature. It is 
not true, then, that we "assume that a something called 'Vital- 
ity 1 entered into and took possession of the elements of matter" 
and raised them to organic compounds, but we show that the 
plants organized the elements and infused Life into them. We 
show, by the materialistic premises, that there was not an origi- 
nally acquired Life by the elements — that no " something called 
'Vitality' entered into them" from a vague source — but a Life 
derived from the vegetable organism. There was no "aquosity" 
about it. And " there's the rub !" — a special Act of Creation, for 
the special purpose of organizing mineral substances, and flowing 
irresistibly from the premises of the Materialist. Our Author 
then goes on with his sarcastic remarks upon Yital Physiologists, 
which, however, would be quite unimportant were they not mis- 
taken by many others as fatal thunder-bolts : 

"And why should 'Vitality 1 hope for a better fate than the 
other *itys' which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus 
accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 303 

'meat-roasting quality,' and scorned the 'materialism' of those 
who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism 
worked* by the draught of the chimney ? If scientific language' is 
to possess a definite and constant signification whenever it is em- 
ployed, it seems to me that we are logically bound to apply to 
the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as 
those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenom- 
ena exhibited by water are its properties (?), so are those pre- 
sented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. [!] If the 
properties of water may be properly said to result from the na- 
ture and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no 
intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of pro- 
toplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules. 
But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you 
are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most 
people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the an- 
tipodes of heaven. It may seem a .small thing to admit that the 
dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the proper- 
ties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature 
of the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have en- 
deavored to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially iden- 
tical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I 
can discover no logical halting -place between the admission that 
such is the case, and the farther concession that all vital action 
may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the mo- 
lecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. [No refer- 
ence to the organic mechanism^] And if so, it must be true, in the 
same sense and to the same extent, that the Thoughts to tvhich I am 
now giving utterance, and YOUR Thoughts regarding them, are the 
EXPRESSIONS OF MOLECULAR CHANGES in that matter of life which 
is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience 
leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the propositions I 
have just placed before you are accessible to public comment 
and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, 
and perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should 
not wonder if ' gross and brutal materialism' 1 were the mildest 
phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And most undoubtedly 
the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic." " The fun- 
damental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism and 



304 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

most other isms, lie outside ' the limits of philosophical inquiry,' 
and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irrefragable 
demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a 
skeptic, and therefore others can not he blamed if they apply the same 
title to him;" and our Author applauds his skepticism. Where's 
the difference ? " But," says our Author, " that does not alter 
the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him 
gross injustice. [!] If a man asks me what the politics of the 
inhabitants of the Moon are, and I reply that I do not know ; 
that neither I, nor any one else have any means of knowing ; 
and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself 
about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call 
me a skeptic." 

Certainly not ; but suppose one has been publicly inculcating 
doctrines that would extinguish the light both of Nature and of 
Eevelation — what then ? And suppose that Hume had denied 
his infidelity, or had prevaricated about it — what then ? I will 
answer for both Hume and Huxley, in the language of Ealph 
Waldo Emerson, that — 

"It is impossible to conceal your opinion. Your opinion is 
known by the very attempt of concealment ; for when an opin- 
ion seeks the darkness, you know what that opinion is. He must 
be a very strong man who can hide his inclination. People can't 
get away from their brain or their affection." 

So Hume and Huxley wisely complied with the exigencies of 
the " materialistic terminology," while a denial would be simply 
an act of timidity designed to avert the anticipated charge of 
" gross and brutal materialism" Nevertheless, the very anticipa- 
tion of the charge is a proof of its justice ; and that the Material- 
ist shrinks from it is a proof that his ground is indefensible. I 
may say, too, that it is a general expedient among writers of this 
denomination, after having carried out their intended purpose of 
undermining our faith, to resort to the subterfuge of declaring 
that they inculcate "neither spiritualism, nor materialism, nor 
theism, because the terms are unintelligible, and we know no 
more of the nature of spirit than we do of the nature of matter," 
or of the " Politics' of the Man in the Moon;" with the farther 
insinuation that the discussion has only involved a " material- 
istic terminology." The confiding victim is conducted in the 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 305 

most subtle manner to the brink of the precipice, when his last 
foot-hold is thus knocked from under him, the epithet of materi- 
alism snatched away, and he finds himself like a tub that has 
lost its bottom. 

The complaints are apt to be very bitter against all who are 
indisposed to allow the Materialist his own unmolested way ; 
and even Printers, as we have seen, are forbidden to supply the 
Critics. * Dr. Biichner, in his Preface to the third and fourth Edi- 
tions of his work on Force and Matter, evinces a sad degree of 
sensibility towards many of his German Critics. Lumping them 
at last together, he says of them, that — 

" Under the protection of rusty traditions, all icho can wield a 
pen rival each other in turning their weapons against the theo* 
ries of the Author and their tendencies ; and there is scarcely any 
tiling printed in which there is not found some thundering denun- 
ciation of the presumptuous materialistic philosoplry." 

This speaks well for Germany, and shows us how a majority 
of the German Writers have been misapprehended. The father- 
land has been darkened by a cloud of small dimensions, but it 
has obscured the very noon-tide sun. The light which has now 
been admitted by its scorching rays turns our attention very 
greatly from that nation to the flood of infidelity which has over- 
spread England, and is beginning to inundate America. 

There is one class of society whom Biichner, wiser than the 
rest, allows a full privilege of opposing his doctrines. He says 
of them — 

" With regard to Parsons and Ecclesiastics, who never cease to 
enlighten and assail us with their eloquence, we beg to repeat 
that ice can not discuss with tliemP " The Author must even 
submit, being in his immediate vicinity taken to task, commented 
upon, and refuted from the pulpit." 

Better still for Germany ! Would it were so in America ! Of 
the former nation our Author goes on to say still better things : 

"It would be a futile attempt," he exclaims, "on the part of 
the Author to repel all attacks directed against his person, and to 
ward off the whole pack which bark at him from every printing- 
office:' 

Let us, then, borrow inspiration from ever faithful Germany ! 
Let us take warning from the admissions of its chief offender, as 

20 



306 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

we thus learn from him how a great Nation, renowned for its 
learning and science, may be brought into reproach by a very 
humble few of its restless " Free-thinkers," and the trouble 
which is also thus inflicted upon others in protecting the igno- 
rant and credulous against their insidious designs. Although 
the great Poet and Philosopher, Goethe, in his Comparative Anat- 
omy (1793), and his Metamorphosis of Plants and Organic Nature, 
and Kant, also, near the close of the last century, promulgated 
doctrines of progressive development from the most simple to 
the highest forms of animals and plants, under the influence of 
external agencies, their doctrines made very little progress in 
Germany till the advent of Darwinism ; while the French Na- 
tion are still contented with the organic philosophy of the great 
Cuvier. Great Britain is far in advance of all the Nations in 
propagating the worst forms of infidelity — building up new doc- 
trines of Life and spontaneity of living beings upon the platform 
of "Correlation and Equivalence of Forces," and stretching away 
into the darkness of Materialism and Pantheism. Its great Phi- 
losophers in Theology, Psychology, Physiology — its Paleys, and 
Bacons, and Stewarts, and Hunters— are consigned to oblivion. 

It may be farther said that few writers deny the being of a 
God in ipissisimis verbis. Atheism is regarded, like Materialism 
in relation to the Soul, as a term of reproach, and embarrassing 
to the doctrine. The propagator of Atheism rather "says in 
his heart there is no God," and instills his belief into others by 
only near approaches — such as undermining Eevelation — ascrib- 
ing, at first, all material existences, organic as well as inorganic, 
to a hypothetical " Unknown Cause," or even employing the 
term creator, and then sliding into the self-existence of all things. 
Such is Atheism; and the same policy applies to Materialism as it 
respects the Soul. But neither terms are epithets. They simply 
express a fact. Atheism is only equivalent to a disbelief in the 
Deity, and merely presents the individual as he is. Neverthe- 
less, although there be a disavowal of Atheism, or of Material- 
ism, the whole drift of an Author's work may be in that direc- 
tion, and conduct its readers into their absurdities. In all such 
cases a rejection of those terms is important to the interests of 
the writer, and there are very few who propagate the doctrines 
that will rest submissively under the imputation. Such was the 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 307 

case with Professor Huxley, when charged with avowing Athe- 
ism by the London Spectator, 1866, for using the phrases "un- 
known and unknowable " in their relation to a first cause, in an 
article in the Fortnightly Review ; and it is not remarkable that 
the Duke of Argyll comes to his defense in his work on the 
Reign of Law. 

A principal leader in Theoretical Geology, the Eev. President 
Hitchcock, defends Geologists in the following manner, and I 
quote the defense for their benefit. Thus : 

" Even did their views lead to Atheism, it ought not to be in- 
sinuated that they are exactly Atheists, when, in fact, the greater 
part of them are not even Infidels." — American Bibl. Repository, 
Jan. 7, 1837. 

Mankind have much the same elements among them now as 
in the Apostolic days, when they were admonished to u beware 
of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing ; but inward- 
ly they are ravening ivolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits." 
There is no other method, therefore, of meeting these influential 
writers than by an open exposure of their doctrines, so only it 
be done by presenting in connection their own words. Without 
this fair as well as plain dealing, neither Eeligion nor Science 
can escape the intended innovations. To this, however, they ob- 
ject, an 'example of which I had occasion to notice in a former 
work ; and as it is applicable to the case before us, at least so far 
as contumely, and even ridicule, is bestowed upon th£ Advocates 
of a Soul and a Principle of Life, as contradistinguishing living 
beings from lifeless matter, I shall repeat it in a note.* 

* Thus it is said by Liebig, that — "It is too frequently forgotten by Physiologists 
that their duty really is, not to refute the experiments of others, nor to show that they 
are erroneous, but to discover truth, and that alone." 

Now this obvious sophistry betrays its motive, since it is utterly at variance with 
the habits of him who enjoins the fallacy upon others. Truth should be, indeed, the 
ultimate object of pursuit ; but the first and most important step towards its attain- 
ment is the removal of obstacles that may lie in its way, and it has grown into a prov- 
erb that "it is more difficult to subdue a prejudice than to build a pyramid." Al- 
though, therefore, the contemplated method must be sometimes argumentative and 
controversial, it has the advantage of leading more immediately to a knowledge of 
the truth upon disputed questions than any other which is not demonstrative. 
There can be no doubt, indeed, that the "establishment of truth" in Physiology, 
Psychology, and all Medical Philosophy, can be effected only by a simultaneous ref- 
utation of the errors which surround it. The Mind will not surrender a favorite doc- 



308 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

There can be no fear, however, of denunciations where the 
cause is either useful or founded in truth, and rarely of the false 
unless detrimental to some important interest of mankind. But 
the fear of censure is a common infirmity with Materialists; of 
which I may add another exemplification in the distinguished 
savant, Dr. H. Bence Jones, from his Lectures on " Matter and 
Force," being the Croonian series for 1868, and in which he says: 

" The views which I have endeavored to bring before you will 
be at once condemned as materialism by those who think that they 
know more of matter than as the fixed abode of force, and more 
of force than as that which gives energy to matter. Those who 
are ready to use the word materialism as a reproach should remem- 
ber that they can give no definition of matter which does not in- 
volve the definition of force, and that they know nothing what- 
ever of matter except as that which can exert or resist force." 

But suppose that we adopt the only possible mode of defining 
matter and force, matter and Mind, that is, by their manifesta- 
tions — does our Author see no difference between the phenom- 
ena of matter and its inorganic forces and those of Mind ? He 
can not indicate a single coincidence between the former and the 
latter. The things, therefore, which the phenomena represent 
are totally unlike each other. And well, indeed, might the Lec- 
turer have had the fear of criticism, if not of " reproach," before 
him (and even now and then at the hands of those who are in- 
formed about " the foundations of natural knowledge "), when 
he scoffs, in the following manner, at those who place their trust 
in Eevelation as well as in the demonstrations of Science. Here, 
then, is the denunciation delivered before the best scientific 
Minds in England, and by whom it may have been applauded : 

" The spiritualist who still holds to the primitive idea of the 
perfect separation of matter and force [the Soul] may find full 
occupation for his reason in weighing the evidence on which his 
belief or internal conviction rests ; but he must leave the in- 
vestigation of the foundations of natural knowledge to those who 
can see no reason for faith in witches, ghosts, transmutations, and 
transmigrations. There are some who think little of scientific 

trine, however false, to the force of truth alone. Even its practical disasters, as we 
everywhere witness, are an inadequate demonstration. But when Error and Truth 
are presented in forcible contrast, it is the pride of Reason to embrace the latter. 






MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 309 

truth, but, comparatively speaking, care much, to recognize the 
Almighty Will as the primary cause of all things." 

Another instance of the same nature occurs more disinterest- 
edly in the able Keview, already mentioned, of Dr. Maudsley's 
work on the "Physiology and Pathology of the Mind," where 
the Ee viewer " imagines some will sniff in them [the doctrines] 
rank materialism, and scout them as unworthy of discussion." It 
will be conceded, however, that the present writer is not amena- 
ble to the latter charge, although he frankly confesses to the 
former. 

Let us now hear a little more of President Huxley's contribu- 
tions to Intellectual Philosophy, and to our hope of Immortality : 

"Farther," he continues, "I take it to be demonstrable that it 
is utterly impossible to prove that any thing whatever may not be 
the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic 
is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spontane- 
ous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, 
has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, 
on the very face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a 
philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given phe- 
nomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is ac- 
quainted with the history of science will admit that its progress 
has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the ex- 
tension of the province of what we call matter and causation, 
and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human 
thought of what we call SPIRIT and spontaneity."* 

Here I stop to say of this brave avowal of materialism, that if 
our Author, the President, will show wherein I have failed, in 
my "Demonstration of the Soul" (Chap. II.), of proving that an 
Originating, Self-acting Principle, known as the Soul, is associated 
with the brain, he will have obtained a strong ground for his as- 
sumption. But he must disprove that demonstration or revoke 
his " banishment from all regions of human thought of what we 
call Spirit and spontaneity." Our Author goes on : 

'And, as surely as every future grows out of the past and 
present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the 
realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, 

* That no misapprehension may arise as to the meaning in which I employ the 
terms spontaneous generation and spontaneity of being, see note at p. 85, Chap. VII. 



310 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

with feeling, and with, action. The consciousness of this great 
truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best 
minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to "be the 
progress of materialism , in such fear and powerless anger as a savage 
feels when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps OVER the face 
of the Sun [while, according to the testimony of 'Science,' 'the 
great shadow creeps over the face of the' — Earth]. The ad- 
vancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tighten- 
ing grasp of law impedes their freedom ; they are alarmed lest 
man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom. 
If the New Philosophy be worthy of the reprobation with 
which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well 
founded. While, on the contrary, could David Hume be con- 
sulted, I think he would smile at their perplexities, and chide 
them for doing even as the heathen, and falling down in terror 
before the hideous idols their own hands have raised. What do 
we know of that ' Spirit ' over whose threatened extinction by 
matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard 
at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown 
and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness?" 
"With a view to the progress of Science [!] the materialistic ter- 
minology is in every way to be preferred; whereas the alterna- 
tive or spiritualistic terminology is utterly barren, and leads to 
nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can 
be no doubt that the farther Science advances the more exten- 
sively and consistently will all the phenomena of nature be rep- 
resented by materialistic formulas and symbols." 

A profession of "Science" as the foundation of Materialism is 
the great bulwark of the Materialistic School; though the sum 
of the whole is the assumption of the " Correlation of Forces " 
and " Equivalence of Phj^sical and Yital Forces." Now this so- 
called " New Philosophy " is as old as the days of Martinus 
Scriblerus; and, indeed, the psychological interpretation to 
which our Author refers, but under an amusing blunder, is just 
about the same as his own, and of his entire school. If clearly 
originated in the satire that was directed against Scriblerus, and 
has been appropriated by the recent Free-thinkers under the 
disguise of the " New Philosophy." Indeed, as we have seen, 
the expedient of the artificial man, which was one of the demon- 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC 311 

strations, has been very recently imitated, even to speaking, in 
behalf of Materialism. (See p. 228.) But we must again have 
our Author before us, if it be only for the mirth of the thing, in 
observing how he mixes up the "Free-thinkers" and Martinus 
Scriblerus in such a way as to make the illustrious Scriblerus 
both the defender and the denouncer of Materialism — making him 
the very Author of the letter addressed to himself by the Free- 
thinkers. Thus, again, our Author : 

"And why should ' vitality ' hope for a better fate than the 
other ' itys ' which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus ac- 
counted for the operations of the meat-jack by its inherent meat-roast- 
ing quality, and scorned the Materialism of those who explained 
the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the 
draught of a chimney ?" 

The reader is aware that Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot were 
the distinguished trio who composed the " Club " that directed 
its efforts in part against " the arguments of those who consider 
Thought as a quality of the molecules of matter " and gave to the 
world a forcible and ludicrous parody of that prevailing doctrine 
in a letter to Scriblerus; purporting to come from the "Free- 
thinkers." The production of that letter will afford the reader 
an opportunity of comparing for himself the present with the 
former philosophy of Materialism, by which he will see that 
there has been no new phase of the " Science," although desig- 
nated as the " New Philosophy." Thus : 

" To the learned Inquisitor into Nature, Martinus Scriblerus ; the 
Society of Free-thinkers, greeting: 

" Grecian Coffee-house, May 7. 

"It is with unspeakable joy we have heard of your inquisitive 
genius, and we think it a great pity that it should not be better 
employed than in looking after that theological nonentity com- 
monly called the Soul ; since, after all }^our inquiries, it will ap- 
pear you have lost your labor in seeking the residence of such a 
chimera, that never had being but in the brains of some dream- 
ing philosophers. Is it not Demonstration to a person of your 
sense that, since you can not find it, there is no such thing? In 
order to set so hopeful a genius right in this matter, we have 
sent you an answer to the ill-grounded sophisms of those crack- 



312 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

brained fellows, and likewise an easy mechanical explication of 
Perception and Thinking. 

" One of their chief arguments is that Self-consciousness can not 
inhere in any system of matter, because all matter is made up of 
several distinct beings, which never can make up one individual 
thinking being. 

"This is easily answered by a familiar instance. In every 
jack there is a meat-roasting quality, which neither resides in the 
fly, nor in the weight, nor in any particular wheel of the jack, 
but is the result of the whole composition ; so, in an animal the 
self-consciousness is not a real quality inherent in one being, any 
more than meat-roasting in a jack, but the result of several 
modes or qualities in the same subject. As the fly, the wheel, 
the chain, the weight, the cords, &c, make one jack, so the sev- 
eral parts of the body make one animal. As Perception, or 
Consciousness, is said to be inherent in this animal, so is meat- 
roasting said to be inherent in the jack. As Sensation, Season- 
ing, Volition, Memorjr, &c., are the several modes of Thinking, 
so roasting of beef, roasting of mutton, roasting of pullets, geese, 
turkeys, &c. } are the several modes of meat-roasting. And as 
the general quality of meat-roasting, with its several modifica- 
tions as to beef, mutton, pullets, &c, does not inhere in any one 
part of the jack, so neither does Consciousness, with its several 
modes of Sensation, Intellection, Yolition, &c, inhere in any one, 
but is the result from the mechanical composition of the whole 
animal. 

" Just so the quality or disposition of a Fiddle to play tunes, 
with the several modifications of this tune-playing quality in play- 
ing of preludes, sarabands, jigs, and gavotts, are as much real qual- 
ities in the instrument, as the Thought or the Imagination is in 
the Mind of the person that composes them; [just as President 
Huxley says : ' The thoughts to which I am now giving utter- 
ance [that is, the Fiddle], and your thoughts regarding them, are 
the expressions of molecular changes in the matter of life, which is 
the source of all other vital phenomena.'] 

" It is well known to anatomists that the brain is a congeries 
of glands, that separate the finer parts of the blood, called animal 
spirits ; that a gland is nothing but a canal' of a great length, va- 
riously intorted and wound up together. From the arietation 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 313 

and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different 
sorts of thoughts. 

"We are so much persuaded of the truth of this our hypothe- 
sis, that we have employed one of our members, a great virtuoso 
at Nuremburg, to make a sort of hydraulic engine, in which a 
chemical liquor resembling blood is driven through elastic chan- 
nels resembling arteries and veins, by the force of an embolus 
like the heart, and wrought by a pneumatic machine of the na- 
ture of the lungs, with ropes and pulleys, like the nerves, ten- 
dons, and muscles ; and we are persuaded that this our artificial 
man will not only walk and speak [the modern one does both], 
and perform most of the outward actions of animal life, but, be- 
ing wound up once a week, will, perhaps, reason as well as most 
of your country Parsons" — or our "modern Philosophers." 

In full justice to the cause which I advocate, I shall present 
Huxley's doctrines, as contained in his work on the " Evidence 
as to Man's Place in Nature," that the reader may see still far- 
ther, not only how destitute are the materialistic assumptions of 
any foundation, but that they are in perfect conflict with all our 
knowledge of the composition, structure, functions, laws, and phe- 
nomena of Organic Beings, and how they are intended to con- 
duct us into the lowest depths of materialism. 

Of Darwin's hypothesis of Development he says — " Mr. Dar- 
win's hypothesis is not, as far as I am aware, inconsistent with any 
known biological fact. 11 (See Chapter "VIII.) "And I, for one, am 
fully convinced that, if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as 
near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Coper- 
nican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary mo- 
tions." " But even leaving Mr. Darwin's views aside, the whole 
analogy of natural operations furnishes so complete and crushing 
an argument against the intervention of any but what are termed 
Secondary Causes in the production of all phenomena of this 
Universe, that, in view of the intimate relations between man 
and the rest of the living world, and between the forces exerted by 
the latter and all other forces, I can see no excuse for doubting 
that all are co-ordinated terms of Nature's great progression from 
THE FORMLESS TO THE FORMED— from the inorganic to the Organic 
— FROM BLIND FORCE TO CONSCIOUS INTELLECT AND WlLL." 



3U PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

And such, again, is "Man's Place in Nature," as well as the 
whole Organic Kingdom ; and such, again, the " Evidence." 

From what we have now and before seen of Darwin's hypoth- 
esis of the " Origin of Species," and as his doctrine inculcates the 
most insinuating aspect, not only of Materialism, but of Atheism, 
I will quote a paragraph from Dr. Hooker's late Address before 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which 
he was the President in 1868, that my readers may the better un- 
derstand what are the prospects of the developmental doctrine. 
Thus Dr. Hooker : 

" Ke views on the ' Origin of Species ' are still pouring in from 
the Continent ; and Agassiz, in one of the Addresses which he 
issued to his co-laborators on their late voyage to the Amazon, 
directs their attention to this theory as a primary object of the ex- 
pedition they were then undertaking. I need only add that, of 
the many eminent Naturalists who have accepted it, not one 
has been known to abandon it ; that it gains adherents steadily ; 
and that it is, par excellence, an avowed favorite with the rising 
schools o£ Naturalists" "It is an accepted doctrine with almost 
every philosophical Naturalist, including, it will always be under- 
stood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to admit 
that it accounts for all that Mr. Darwin assigns to it." " The 
scientific writers who have publicly rejected the theories of con- 
tinuous evolution, or of natural selection, or of both, take their 
stand upon physical grounds, or Metaphysical, or both. Of those 
who rely on the Metaphysical, their arguments are usually strong- 
ly imbued with theological prejudice, and even odium, and as 
such are beyond the pale of scientific criticism ; and I long ago 
arrived at the conclusion so well put by Agassiz, where he says 
— ' We trust that the time is not distant when it will be univers- 
ally understood that the battle of the evidences will have to be fought 
on the field of Physical Science, and not on that of the Metaphysic- 
al^ " Of this I am persuaded, and therefore avoid the Metaphys- 
ical ; but this should not interfere with the duties of Theological 
instruction. 

To enforce the foregoing opinions, we are told that — :"Ten 
j^ears have elapsed since the publication of the ' Origin of Spe- 
cies by Natural Selection, 7 and it has passed through four En- 
glish editions, two American, two German, two French, several 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 315 

Kussian, a Dutch, and an Italian." — Norfolk Chronicle, August 20, 
1868. 

And thus spoke the Kev. J. M. Berkeley, President of the 
Section on Biology, at the same meeting of the Association, on 
referring to Darwin's "theory of Pangenesis" — "Like every 
thing which came from the pen of a writer whom he had no hes- 
itation, as far as his judgment went, in considering as by far the 
greatest observer of the age, whatever might be thought of his 
theories when carried out to their extreme results, the subject 
demanded a careful and impartial consideration. Like the doc- 
trine of ' Natural Selection,' it was sure to modify, more or less, 
their modes of thought." " Of this, however, he felt assured, 
that the members of the Association would unite with him in 
bidding that great and conscientious Author God- speed.'''' — Norfolk 
News, August 21. 

And thus Darwin himself: "I should infer from analogy 
that probably all the Organic Beings which have ever lived on 
this earth have descended from One Primordial Form." That, 
of course, embraces the human race; but, to remove any obscuri- 
ties as to the Ancestor of man, it is added that — "In a distant 
future Light will be thrown on the Origin of man and his histo- 
ry." — Origin of Species, &c. 

Or, as the Eev. Dr. M'Cosh expresses it in his " Typical Forms 
of Creation" — " Certain bipedal footsteps in the new red sandstone 
of Connecticut are recognized as those of birds. Man, the true 
biped, was to appear in a subsequent and still distant epoch." 

There is a pleasing novelty about the following doctrine of 
the " parturitive powers" of "Mother Earth," which, Vnoreover, 
would shape the hypothesis to the Mosaic Narrative as soon as 
the "parturitive powers had given birth" to the first animals and 
plants. This ingenious doctrine comes to us from Professor 
Taylor Lewis's " Six Days of Creation " (1855). Thus— 

" We are not told that the parturitive powers of the Earth, 
when they first began to be exercised, were very different from 
what they are now. They may have been more rapid or more 
slow, but IF it was a real physical energy, governed by Law, and 
not merely an arbitrary sign of a contra-natural power, it must, 
at least, have had a harmony in its workings — such a harmony 
as would have required that the widely varying among its di- 



316 PHYSIOLOGY OP THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

versified effects should bear some ratio to the greater strength 
•or longer duration in the cause. It would not have brought out 
the full-formed, full-grown, and ripened cedar of Lebanon in 
the same time it required for giving birth to the mushroom. No 
intimation is given that the first growth, after the instantaneous 
starting power, or the utterance of the creative Word, was not as 
natural as any that followed. We are rather led to believe that 
the first growth gave the Law to all subsequent production. If 
the first plants or trees did not come from a previous organized seed, 
the first seeds, at all events, grew out of the plant, and, as far as the 
language gives us any idea, in a similar manner and by a similar 
Law, and in a corresponding time, or succession of times, to that 
which regulated any subsequent seeding, or ripening, or fruc- 
tification of the parent organism." "There was & previous na- 
ture in the earth, whether it had been in operation for twenty- 
four hours or twenty-four thousand years. We may compare 
this to a stream flowing on and having its regular current of Law, 
or regulated succession of cause and effect. Into this stream we 
may say there was dropped a new power — supernatural, yet not 
contra-natural, or unnatural — varying the old flow, and raising 
it to a higher Law and a higher energy, yet still in harmony 
with it. New causations, or new modifications of causation, arise, 
and, after the successions and steps required, be they longer or 
shorter, a ivorld of vegetation is the result of this chain of causation 
in the one period ; and animal creation arose in another. 1 '' u It 
would be the same word repeating, yet expanding, itself in every 
ascending species, just as it is the same specific word repeating it- 
self in every individual birth which the Laws of maternal nature 
are ever bringing out from the seminal energy. [! ] What Science 
may say to this we do not clearly know, nor are we much con- 
cerned about her decisions." 

But, remarkably enough, our Author pronounces judgment 
upon others who advocate the development of living beings un- 
der the laws of inorganic nature in the following manner : 

" The view here advocated as the right interpretation is very 
different from that eternal and unbroken development which is 
only another name for the darkest atheism." 

The following quotation shows, also, very distinctly the disposi- 
tion which our Author would make of the Narrative of Creation : 



MATERIALISM.— SPONTANEOUS GENERATION, ETC. 317 

"Another theory would regard them [animals and plants] as 
created in numbers, and assigned to their positions in all quar- 
ters of the globe, thus constituting a great many centres of pro- 
duction. In both cases the original plants and animals would be 
direct creations, coming immediately from the ab-extra plastic pow- 
er, or mechanical shaping of the Deity. But certainly the ac- 
count does not tell of any thing like this. There is no language from 
which we could infer it. There is nothing in any other part of 
the context which would shut us up to it. There are no meta- 
phors which would in any way imply it. There are no words 
containing the germs of ideas which could possibly be expanded 
so as to embrace such a conception." — Six Days of Creation. 



318 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER X. 

MATERIALISTIC DOCTRINES CONTINUED, IN THEIR RELATIONS TO 
THE SOUL, TO THE ORIGIN OF LIVING BEINGS, AND TO PAN- 
THEISM. — DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THEORETICAL 
GEOLOGY. — HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS, ETC. — " EMANCIPATION 
OF SCIENCE FROM THEOLOGY." 

Nothing could have been more auspicious to the success of 
a general innovation upon established faith in Revelation than 
the circumstances which attended the introduction of the recent 
system of Theoretical Geology to the community at large. The 
press was now becoming an almost universal avenue to knowl- 
edge, and that vast class of society which but a little before was 
shut out from its advantages was ready to receive with avidity 
whatever would most delight the imagination or administer to 
the zest for novelty. A spirit of "free inquiry" and "rational- 
ism" was also abroad in the land. 

The Rev. Dr. Buckland, the eminent " Canon of Christ- 
church," constructed his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology in the 
most able manner for these purposes. It bore upon its pages 
nothing but the extraordinary and the marvellous. It every- 
where addressed itself to the imagination, in fact and in rhe- 
torical and pictorial embellishment. It levelled all philosophy 
that was in the way of its assumptions, classed with the "preju- 
diced persecutors of Galileo whosoever might apprehend danger 
to Religion," and went steadily through with the apparently 
single purpose of overthrowing the Narratives of Creation and 
the Flood. It had the immense advantage of emanating from 
one who was commissioned to expound the truths of Revelation, 
and it bore upon its front the specious declaration that it came 
to the aid of "Natural Theology." It assumed that its interpre- 
tations were as truly founded in nature as the facts themselves, 
and therefore, says the Author, "No one who believes the Bible 
to be the word of God has cause to fear any discrepancy between 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 319 

this, his word, and the results of any discoveries respecting the 
nature of his works." Its claims to consideration were not a lit- 
tle enforced by the astonishing renunciation of that admirable 
work in proof of the Noachian Flood — the " Reliquiae Diluviance." 
It enjoyed the patronage of an Association for the promotion of 
Eeligion, and had already been crowned by the Savants before 
it was to receive its greater crown from the hands of the people. 
Thus armed and thus accomplished, it rode triumphantly over 
all opposition, and was received with acclamations by the won- 
dering multitude. 

Such, then, is in part a brief history of the introduction of 
popular geology — the creation, as it were, of an instant — the 
most extraordinary revolution, in view of its consequences, in 
human affairs. The Christian world being thus prepared, it 
need not be said who or how many have since basked in its fa- 
vor; but it may be said that the discoveries which have been 
subsequently made by the multitude who have entered the field 
with a view to theoretical problems have resulted in little else 
than a series of assumptions in conflict with each other, and with 
Nature and Eevelation. Many eminent Divines were at once 
ingulfed in its vortex ; many of them, however, not from de- 
liberate convictidn, but from being staggered and alarmed by 
denunciations of ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance, and by the 
influence of example and authority. Our Author was not with- 
out fear that he would encounter opposition, and he prepares his 
way by anticipating objections in his second chapter, where he 
remarks that — " The early and deliberative stages of scientific 
discovery are always those of perplexity and alarm, and during 
these stages the human mind is naturally circumspect, and slow 
to admit new conclusions in snc\y department of knowledge. The 
prejudiced persecutors of Galileo apprehended danger to Eelig- 
ion," &c. 

But Theoretical Geology has a long antecedent history when 
it was limited to the walks of the cultivated ranks; upon whom, 
however, it wrought those influences which are felt by the un- 
lettered masses when their Superiors are arrayed against Eevela- 
tion. Buffon gave a great impulse to ambition in interpreting 
the Institutions of nature independently of their revealed Crea- 
tion. From this time speculative views of the origin of the 



320 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

earth and its inhabitants grew into systems, but of such incon- 
gruous parts that new devices quickly succeeded each other, and 
ultimately became so alarming as to seriously engage the atten- 
tion of the French Institute, and by which they were unanimous- 
ly condem-ned. Cardinal Wiseman, in his Lectures on the Con- 
nection between Science and Revealed Religion (1837), refers to the 
proscribed theories in the following manner : 

" From the time of Buffon, system rose beside system like the 
moving pillars of the desert, advancing in threatening array, but, 
like them, they were fabrics of sand ; and though in 1806 the 
French Institute counted more than eighty such theories hostile to 
the Scripture History, not one of them has stood till now, or deserves 
to be recorded." 

I have thus quoted the Cardinal partly for the purpose of ex- 
emplifying the ambitious and innovating spirit of Theoretical 
Geology. This eminent Divine had undertaken a work on the 
" Connection between Science and Eevealed Eeligion." He had 
an "itching palm," and entered the arena con amore. In these 
popular Lectures he presented a very entertaining system of cos- 
mogony; and, although he built upon a foundation peculiar to 
himself, his violation of the Sacred Narrative is so great as to 
have rendered him a special authority in Theoretical Geology 
for any license in which it may choose to indulge. His avowed 
ignorance of Geology, like that of the Eev. Dr. Chalmers. Bishop 
Gleig, and other Clerical Theoretical Geologists, appears, also, to 
have contributed to his authority. He informs us that — "In 
making these remarks, I am not guided hj & personal predilection 
to any system. I have no claim to be called a geologist. I have 
studied the science more in its history than its practical princi- 
ples." 

Howard, the Geologist, in his "History of the Earth and 
Mankind" (1797), already quoted, has an admirable comment 
upon the geological systems before they received the judgment 
of the French Institute ; and his criticism is so exactly applicable 
to the latest in the long series (as I shall have variously shown), 
that it will be profitable to quote his remarks, particularly as the 
celebrated " eighty " of the French Institute were similar in their 
departure from the Mosaic Narrative to the hypotheses of the 
present day. Howard says of them that — 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 321 

" These pretended testimonies of Nature are in so much the 
more doubtful as their adducers disagree among themselves, and 
that the jarring systems hitherto substituted for the Mosaic ac- 
count, so far from according better with the Laws of Nature, or 
being a clearer explication of her past and present state, arc gen- 
erally founded on absurd or ideal hypotheses, and often in direct 
opposition to the most certain principles hitherto deduced from 
her." (See Chapter VII.) 

We now approach the more intimate relations of our subject 
to Theoretical Geology. But from what we have seen of the 
prevailing doctrines of the development of living beings, of Ma- 
terialism in respect to the Soul, &c, we need not be surprised at 
any hypotheses of the origin and duration of the Earth — wheth- 
er it have been a part of the Sun in a nebulous condition, and, 
being detached, have gradually cooled down to the present day, 
or undergone remodellings through countless millions of years, 
or whether it be self-existent. The fact, however, of the general 
admission that man has occupied the globe for only a few thou- 
sand years affords, prima facie, a substantial ground for the con- 
clusion that the first appearance of plants and animals belongs to 
the same era; since they must be taken together as inseparable 
parts in the scheme of Unity of Design. But we have many 
other reasons for this conclusion, and of a more demonstrative 
nature. 

I had been last speaking of the origin of living beings in the 
supposed Creative Law of inorganic nature, and we have had the 
subject under review in a variety of aspects as an abstract specu- 
lative question, having mostly for its foundation the assumption 
of the " Correlation or Equivalence of Physical and Vital Forces." 
We will now look at the nature of the contributions which it 
has received from Theoretical Geology. 

The doctrine of progressive development manifests itself, as we 
have seen, in a variety of shapes, depending much, upon the pe- 
culiarities of individual imagination, and the extent of the dispo- 
sition to include in the hypothesis any other agency than the 
forces of the inorganic world. Even where the doctrine takes 
along a remote connection with creative power, it necessarily in- 
culcates the origin of living beings in the forces of inorganic 
nature, and leaves nothing to the Creator but that of having or- 

21 



322 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

dained two systems of Laws in absolute contradiction of each 
other — one system for the spontaneity, or inorganic production, 
of living beings, and this to be ultimately supplanted by the sex- 
ual system. One of the best examples of this, where the Crea- 
tor is introduced, is propounded by the distinguished Professor 
Owen, and embraces the "typical plan." Thus— 

"The recognition of an ideal exemplar in the vertebrated ani- 
mals proves that the knowledge of such a being as man must 
have existed before man appeared ; for the Divine Mind which 
planned the archetype also forekneiv its modifications. The arch- 
etype idea was manifested in the flesh prior to the existence of 
those animal species that actually exemplify it. To ivhat natu- 
ral Laws or secondary causes the orderly succession and progression 
of such organic phenomena may have been committed, we are as yet 
ignorant. But if, without derogation of the Divine Power, we 
may conceive of the existence of such ministers, and personify 
them by the term Nature, we learn from the past history of our 
globe that it has advanced with slow and stcdely steps, guided by 
the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, from 
the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under its old ichthyic 
vestment, until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the hu- 
man form." — Owen, on Limbs. 

Our eminent Author, however, does not adopt the " One Pri- 
mordial Form," but prefers a multitude of rudiments. This we 
learn from his "Anatomy of Vertebrates " (1868), in which he re- 
marks that — 

"I prefer, while indulging in such speculations, to consider 
the daily homogeneously-developed forms of protozoal jellies, 
sarcodes, and single-celled organisms, to have been as many roots 
from which the higher grades have ramified, than that the origin 
of the whole organic creation is to be referred, as the Egyptian 
Priests did that of the Universe, to a single Egg." 

And here is our Author's only direct argument in behalf of 
the "Correlation or Equivalence of Physical and Vital Forces;" 
and, as will be seen, he reasons in the usual manner, from the 
phenomena of inorganic matter, which have no relation to the 
question. Thus he sa}^s that — 

"Magnetic phenomena are sufficiently wonderful, exemplify- 
ing as they do, one of those subtle, interchangeable, may we not 



DOCTKINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 323 

say 'immaterial,' modes of force which, endows the metal with 
the power of attracting, selecting, and making to move a sub- 
stance extraneous to itself. It is analogically conceivable that 
the same Cause which has endowed His world with power con- 
vertible into magnetic, electric, thermatic, and other forms or 
modes of force, has also added the conditions of conversion into 
the vital mode" 

Such, again and again, are the supposed forces which give rise 
to living beings, and such the assumed nature of the premises. 
The consistency, also, of our Author's opinion of the Soul with 
the foregoing doctrine may be seen at page 254. I can not, how- 
ever, avoid an expression of surprise that such sentiments should 
occur in so magnificent a work as the "Anatomy of Vertebrates," 
in which our Author displays in the most masterly manner, in 
the three large copiously illustrated volumes, an almost endless 
series of wonderful designs, every one of which proclaims the 
immediate Act of the Creator. Our Author sees a special design 
even in " the fitness of the organization of the Horse and Ass for 
the needs of mankind ;" and " I believe," he adds, " the Horse 
to have been predestined and prepared for man." — The designing 
power of the destructive forces of inorganic nature ! What evi- 
dence have we that they were ever otherwise than destructive 
of the conditions of inorganic matter, and therefore, of necessity, 
utterly incapable of forming organic compounds ? Moreover, 
when they are supposed to have been engaged in the "creation" 
of animals and plants, they were far more destructive than since 
the supposed appearance even of man, as attested by those geo- 
logical debacles which brought about the fossiliferous rocks. But 
the absurdities of all this I have abundantly examined in the 
sixth and seventh chapters. 

And thus Professor Ag-ASSIZ, in his " Comparative Physiology " 
— "It is evident that there is a manifest progress in the succession 
of "beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in 
an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the ver- 
tebrata, especially, in their increasing resemblance to man. But 
this connection is not the consequence of a direct lineage between 
the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental de- 
scent connecting them [nothing like Darwinism]. The fishes 
of the palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the rep- 



324 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tiles of the secondary age, nor does man descend from the mam- 
malia which preceded him in the tertiary age. The link by which 
they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature ; and 
their connection is to be sought IN THE VIEW OF THE CREATOR 
Himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to un- 
dergo the successive changes which Geology has pointed out, 
and in creating successively all the different 4ypes of animals which 
have passed away, WAS TO INTRODUCE MAN UPON ITS SURFACE. [!] 
Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended 
from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic Fishes" 

And what else than spontaneity of living beings (after the 
manner of the " Vestiges of Creation," p. 181), is inferable from the 
following speculation by Hugh Miller, whatever reservation 
there may be, for prudential purposes, in. behalf of a Creator? 
Thus Miller, in his "Old Bed Sandstone:" 

" The line of existence bisects on both sides the line of extinc- 
tion. May it not probably form a curve, descending equally 
from an elevated centre to the points of bisection on the level of 
death ? But whatever may have been the cause [of increase in 
the bulk of different species offish], the change furnishes another 
instance of analogy between the progress of individuals and of 
orders." " We begin with an age of dwarfs — we end with an 
age of giants. The march of Nature is an onward and ascend- 
ing march ; the stages are slow, hut the tread is stately ; and to Him 
who has commanded, and who overlooks it, a thousand years are 
but a single day, and a single day as a thousand years " — which 
may be equally said of any indefinite number of years ; but it 
proves nothing. 

" Every plant and animal," says the Eev. Dr. M'Cosh very 
truly, in his " Typical Forms of Creation " (1856), " is formed after 
a general plan, while it is intended all along by its Maker for a 
special end and no other." But our learned Author failed of ap- 
preciating the import of this greatest of all fundamental truths; 
for he goes on immediately to say that — " It is only as it [the 
plan] advances we can discover that end. We are to show that 
there is a close resemblance between the foundation structure, or 
earliest rudiment, of all plants and animals ; we are to show that, 
as the structure advances, each takes its peculiar form to suit it to its 
evidently predetermined end ; and we are to show, at the same 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OE GEOLOGY, ETC. 325 

time, that there is a remarkable parallelism in the development 
of organic beings, and this along the whole separate lines 
of their progress." Then why not created at once, as denoted 
by the " predetermined end," and by the " parallelism ?" 

And yet our learned Author presents some stubborn facts 
which are in absolute contradiction of the " typical plan " of 
spontaneity of beings, fatal to Theoretical Geology, and as con- 
clusive of the Mosaic doctrine of Creation. Thus, among them, 
we have the following, which is as good as a thousand similar 
facts, of which, however, we shall have seen a variety : 

"In 1847, Professor Plieninger, of Stuttgart, found two fossil mo- 
lar teeth, which must have belonged to a warm-Wooded quadruped, 
lying between the Lias and Keuper formations (approaching the 
Carboniferous era), in a bone-bed in Wurtemberg. Such a relic 
indicates associations of structure which are found in man him- 
self; and at this point in the earth's history we have the herald 
of the great mammalian class, at the head of which man is placed 
— the first in nature, though the last in time." 

The foregoing fact would of itself, were there not many others 
like it, prove the contemporaneous appearance of man with the 
most inferior of the animal tribes — those " exemplars of Nature''' 1 
after which man and the superior animals were to be fashioned. 
And if such exuviae are not often found in the coal-formations, 
their existence outside, even at an anterior period, is precisely 
equivalent. But we shall see why they are rare in the coal- 
fields. (Appendix III.) 

A diversity of opinions exists as to the period of time during 
which the " Creative Law " of the earth was engaged in its prog- 
ress from the lowest forms of Organic Life till it was sufficiently 
matured for the production of the human race. A distinguished 
Professor of Physiology in the University of Heidelberg, H. L. F. 
Helmholtz, supplies the following information in his Essay on 
the " Intervention of Natural Forces" besides other interesting 
matter. Thus — 

"Different Geologists, proceeding from different premises, 
have sought to estimate the duration of the creative period, 
and vary from a million to nine million years. And the time 
during which the Earth generated organic beings is again small 
when we compare it with the ages during which the world was 



326 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

a ball of fused rocks. For the duration of its cooling from 
2000° to 200° centigrade, the experiments of Bishop upon basalt 
show that about three hundred and fifty millions of years would 
be necessary. And with regard to the time during which the 
first nebulous mass condensed into our planetary system, our 
most daring conjectures must cease. (See Appendix I.) The 
history of man, therefore, is but a short ripple in the ocean of 
time." 

Pbtup Howard, who was quite a philosopher in his way, 
and a reformer withal, proposes, in his "History of the Earth 
and of Mankind " (quarto, 1797), that the work of Creation shall 
be attributed " to the well-known Laws of Nature," so that — 

"If the progressive formation which Moses describes could be 
produced by the successive application of those known means in 
some one order which may be imagined and devised, the greatest 
possible weight will certainly be given to his account of Citation ; 
and the real secret of nature, as far as human understanding can 
dive, will be nearly discovered. Whatever is beyond, that is, the 
cause of these fundamental Laws, must be resolved into the Will 
of the Creator. The greatest difficulty will be to ascertain the or- 
der and APPLICATION OF THOSE Laws. It may probably require 
the united study and sagacity of the greatest philosophers to bring 
the whole to perfect agreement. It will not be surprising if the 
first inquirers commit important mistakes in this research. 11 

This vague suggestion has been prolific, as we have seen, of a 
vast amount of repetition, but of no attempt " to ascertain the 
order and application of the Laws," so that the subject is left ex- 
actly where it was started by our almost forgotten Author — still 
awaiting "the united study and sagacity of the greatest philoso- 
phers." I have said that Howard professed to be a reformer, 
and his account of the state of Theoretical Geology near a cen- 
tury ago is so compact that the reader may readily compare it 
with the state of the " Science " at our own day ; and observe 
how oblivious he was to his own speculations. Thus — 

" Hitherto most Authors who have written upon the subject 
of Creation seem to have first framed their own system, and then 
to have endeavored TO strain the text of Hoses to its support, or to 
explain it aivay when that coidd not be effected. Others have re- 
jected him with slight, because he stood in the way of their own 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OE GEOLOGY, ETC. 327 

particular ideas. Few or none have examined candidly without re- 
trospect to some pre-adopted system."* 

Nowhere does Theoretical Geology betray its inconsistencies, 
or evince less deference to the Wisdom and Consistency of the 
Creator than in its "typical plan." (See Chapter VII.) Cer- 
tain species of animals have been dying out to the present day, 
and their destruction was great and rapid at the early period of 
the earth, when those violent causes were in operation that 
brought about its stratification. But this was soon over, as I 
shall endeavor to show in Appendix I. ; and the Dodo is the only 
authenticated instance of extinction since man began his records. 
Others, however, like the Mastodon, have not been long extinct. 
Thus, the extinction of animals in ancient times is immediately 
connected with that of the present through survivors that have 
come down to us through these by-gone eras. The fact in itself 
indicates that they are all parts of one, and one only, creation; 
while it is certainly the only one that is in the least consistent 
with Unity of Design. It is certain, also, that species, from the 
lowest to the highest, of the same organization with the extinct 
and the supposed extinct, continue to exist, having survived the 
early tempestuous era. But these are assumed to be new devel- 
opments, without any possible motive for extinguishing all their 
predecessors, and then reproducing others exactly like them in 
organic structure, though the}?" be of different species — especially 
as all the extinct tribes were created male and female for their 

* Sir Charles Lyell summons to the aid of Theoretical Geology, at the outset 
of his "Principles," the narrative of Creation as embraced in the "Institutes of 
Menu" (b.c. 880), with the particular purpose of showing that — " This pretended 
revelation was not purely an effort of the unassisted imagination, nor invented with- 
out regard to the opinions and observations of naturalists. There are introduced 
into it certain astronomical theories, evidently derived from observation and reason- 
ing." Therefore, says our Author — "If such statements can not be resolved into 
mere conjectures, we have no right to refer to mere chance the prevailing notion 
that the Earth and its inhabitants had formerly undergone a succession of revolutions 
and catastrophes interrupted by long intervals of tranquillity ." He then proceeds to 
surmise that these conclusions may have been deduced from the fossil remains which 
now underlie Theoretical Geology ; notwithstanding it is only till a recent time that 
they have engaged any attention at all. "They form," says Dr. Buckland, "the 
peculiar feature and basis of Modern Geology." It is, as we have seen of the geo- 
logical exposition of the distinction in sex, like invoking the aid of the organizing 
sexual principle in the Creative Law of the Hindoos and Egyptians (page 210). 



328 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

own perpetuation. But, besides our demonstrative facts (Chap- 
ter VII., &c), what is fatal to Creation by the forces of inorganic 
nature, and which is sufficient to establish the Mosaic Narrative, 
is the existence at the present day of the same species whose ex- 
uvise are found in the lowest fossiliferous rocks. This is not 
only particularly true of the most inferior, those earliest " types" 
or "exemplars," but of the superior tribes. 

I will here quote, however, Theoretical Geology as showing 
how completely all my conclusions are sustained by its own 
facts. Take, in the first place, the following comprehensive il- 
lustration, in which, we find the remote past and the present 
identified ; species dying out while others of an earlier geological 
date are still among the living, and the climax ended by grant- 
ing all that can be claimed or desired — that they are "parts of 
one great system of Creation.'''' And yet what strange contradic- 
tions of facts and philosophy are confounded together! The 
quotation shows us, also, the manner in which Theoretical Ge- 
ology bridges over the vacuums that have occurred among the 
living genera of animals. Here is the agreement with us, which 
should be taken in connection with the fossil mammalian teeth 
discovered at Wiirtemberg (p. 325). 

" The numerical preponderance of Pachydermata among the 
earliest fossil mammalia, beyond the proportion they bear among 
existing quadrupeds, is a remarkable fact much insisted on by 
Cuvier, because it supplies from the relics of a former world many 
intermediate forms which do not occur in the present distribu- 
tion of that important order. As the living genera of the Pachy- 
dermata are more widely separated from one another than those 
of any other order of mammalia, it is important to fill these vacant 
intervals with the fossil genera of a former state of the earth ; thus 
supplying links that appeared deficient in the grand continu- 
ous CHAIN WHICH CONNECTS ALL PAST AND PRESENT FORMS OF 
ORGANIC LIFE AS PARTS OF ONE GREAT SYSTEM OF CREATION." 
— BuCKLAND's Bridgewater Treatise. 

Leaving out of the foregoing quotation the assumption of a 
" former state of the earth" the doctrine is exactly ours; nor will 
the reader fail of seeing that the assumption is contradicted by 
the concluding part of the paragraph. But let us suppose that 
these genera were extinguished according to the hypothesis of 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 329 

Theoretical Geology ; in what aspect does it present the Crea- 
tor, or the Laws which He ordained, when one or the other 
brought into being the living genera of Pachydermata? Cer- 
tainly, that one or the other did it very imperfectly in having 
left "vacant intervals to he filled with the fossil genera of a former 
state of the earth" No; the hiatus is occupied by such "parts of 
one great symmetrical system of Creation" and by such " links in 
the great continuous chain" that it can not be doubted that the 
logical mind will come to the conclusion, rather, that those im- 
portant "links" had "died out a natural death," than that ei- 
ther the Creator or His second cause had assigned them a place 
in " a former state of the earth," and then have left it to Theo- 
retical Geology to supply the "links" from the rubbish of an 
exploded world. 

Numerous other quotations from the highest Authorities, of a 
similar import, will be introduced, that all readers may be satis- 
fied by having before them the various facts and conclusions 
upon our subjects, and that they may see, also, the discrepancies 
among Geologists upon its fundamental doctrine of creations and 
extinctions. The two following quotations, from different Au- 
thors, are introduced as a farther exemplification of the " typical 
plan." One of them possesses also the interest of defining the 
time at which the earth, in its process of cooling down from an 
incandescent state, became invested with a coating of ice. The 
reader will remark, also, in respect to the supposed submersion 
of the north of Europe and North America, that the " erratics " 
or bowlders now lie everywhere upon the surface of the ground, 
often with vegetable soil beneath immense masses, or piled up 
into hills along with a variety of diluvial drift. Thus it is said 
by a distinguished authority that — 

"After the ice that carried the erratics [our bowlders of the 
Elood] had melted away, the surface of North America and the 
north of Europe was covered by the sea, in consequence of the 
general subsidence of the continents. It is not until this period 
that we find incontestable traces of the species of animals now exist- 
ing. Among the land animals which then made their appear- 
ance [after the water had again retreated], there were representa- 
tives of all the genera and species now living around us, and besides 
these, many tj-pes now extinct, some of them of a gigantic size, 



330 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

such as the Mastodon, probably the very last animal which be- 
came extinct before the Creation of man." — Ag-assiz's Princi- 
ples of Zoology. 

The animals existing prior to the appearance of man are gener- 
ally supposed to have become extinct, the last of them being the 
Mastodon. The present animal tribes then sprang up, preparatory 
to the approaching advent of the human race. But Theoretical 
Geology, in the complexities of its hypotheses, as one or another 
may be suggested by a particular fact, neglects other facts which 
are absolutely contradictory; as, indeed, we have just seen of 
the earth being covered with ice (to account for the " erratics"), 
when it is assumed to have been at least at a tropical temperature 
in North America and in the north of Europe. The following 
statement by Sir Charles Lyell, among others of a similar 
nature, will illustrate, in connection with the foregoing, the par- 
ticular problem in question. Thus — 

" The Mammoth also appears to have existed in England when 
the temperature of our latitudes could not have been very dif- 
ferent from that which now prevails; for remains of this animal 
have been found at North Cliff, in the County of York, in a la- 
custrine formation, in which all the land and fresh-water shells can 
be identified with species and varieties now existing in that country. 
Bones of the Bison also, an animal now inhabiting a cold or tem- 
perate climate, have been found in the same place. That those 
quadrupeds, and the indigenous species of testacea associated 
with them, were all contemporary inhabitants of Yorkshire, has 
been established by unequivocal proof ." 

I, therefore, say that Theoretical Geology should know from its 
own facts, as they lie obscurely buried in the preceding quota- 
tion (which is as conclusive as a thousand of a similar nature), 
that the contemporaneous existence of aquatic animals now in 
being, and our own living Bison, along with the extinct Mammoth, 
proves that there were neither the assumed extinctions nor crea- 
tions, nor a shade of difference in the condition of the earth during 
11 the Reign of the Mastodon" and its present condition. 

Here is another statement to the same effect, referring back to 
the earliest fossiliferous rocks. Thus — 

"In the great series of secondary rocks," says Sir Charles, 
"many distinct assemblages of organized fossils are entombed, all 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OE GEOLOGY, ETC. S31 

of unknown species, and many of them referable to genera and 
families now most abundant between the tropics." 

The "typical plan" of nature in the production of living be- 
ings is the invention of Theoretical Geology, and refers their cre- 
ation, as we have seen extensively, to the properties or forces that 
are impressed upon the elements of matter ; though, as we have 
also seen, this doctrine is giving way to Darwin's hypothesis of 
development from "one primordial form." Should this phase 
of the spontaneity of living beings prevail, then must Theoretical 
Geology abandon the entire ground upon which its present fab- 
ric is erected. It must substitute a continuous chain from that 
"one primordial form" for its extinctions, reproductions, and re- 
modellings. But even this is a far more reasonable view of the 
consistency of the "Laws of Nature" than that aspect of the 
"typical plan" which represents them as engaged in an experi- 
mental work, and extinguishing as they advanced in improve- 
ments, till at last, having perfected the plan, and " extinguished 
the model types," they brought into being, simultaneously, thou- 
sands of species organized exactly after the fashion of the extin- 
guished "models," and even reproducing many of the models, 
and bringing about "the special end" of the whole in the pro- 
duction of man. Or, is there any conceivable purpose for hav- 
ing devoted this earth for millions of years to the animal tribes? 
Every thing proclaims, and all admit, that the globe and the an- 
imal tribes were intended for the special uses of man. Not a 
motive can be assigned for their introduction until the being for 
whom they were designed was about to be brought into exist- 
ence. Throughout the natural world all things conspire together 
in one universal demonstration that God has created nothing in 
vain ; nor do I believe that there is any intelligent and candid 
Geologist who will sincerely maintain that animals were created 
for the mere purpose of enjoyment, or of "reigning the lords of 
the former world." And how perfectly in harmony is all this 
with the pronunciations of the Creator — 

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, 
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 

And I would say of the simultaneous Creation of the several 



332 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

great parts respectively, of the systematic whole of organic be- 
ings, as an able Geologist of the last century apostrophized of 
that Universe of Orbs which, was the work of the Mosaic Days, 
that — 

" I own, in my conception, nothing more magnificent than to 
imagine all this vast visible universe drawn from nothing, at one 
and the same time, at God's voice ; all those globes, whose mag- 
nitudes and whose numbers astonish us, springing forth at once 
at His command, to take their destined places, to compose diverse 
systems ruled by invariable laws which there retain them, and 
to form' by their union and reciprocal connection one great whole, 
whose perfect harmony reason shows us, but whose limits the 
most exalted imagination can not measure." 

And yet the foregoing writer ascribes the origin of living be- 
ings to the forces of inorganic nature. And we have seen that 
while Theoretical Geology borrows its evidence of design from 
the living kingdoms of nature and bestows them upon the fossils 
of the rocks, it imputes to the Laws of Nature a fragmentary, ex- 
perimental system of creation, and without any conceivable ob- 
ject, until it reaches the last animal and plant in that discredita- 
ble scheme ; and then we are told — " Look, now, at the consum- 
mation of Nature's plan in the creation of man, and a simulta- 
neous reproduction of a thousand times greater variety in organ- 
ization than had been the progressive work of an incomprehen- 
sible series of ages ; see, now, how manifest it is. that all this in- 
calculable variety of plants and animals is designed for the well- 
being of man I" But not a word as to the objects in the produc- 
tion of those races which are supposed to have preceded man's 
appearance. This is something which Theoretical Geology dis- 
misses as without any apparent design ; but, astonished at its 
own conclusions, apostrophizes after the following manner: 

" What various reflections crowd upon the mind if we carry 
back our thoughts to the time when the surface of the globe was 
agitated by conflicting elements, or to the succeeding intervals 
of repose when enormous crocodilian animals scoured the surface 
of the deep, or darted through the air for their prey ; or, again, 
to the state of the ancient continents, when the deep silence of 
nature was broken by the bellowings of the Mammoth and the 
Mastodon, who stalked the lords of the former world, and perished in 



DOCTBINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 333 

the last grand revolution that preceded the creation of man. Such 
speculations are somewhat humbling to human pride, on the one 
hand ; but, on the other, they prove our superiority over the rest of 
the animal creation." ! ! — Nevertheless, a little farther on, he con- 
cludes that — " There is good reason to believe that in North 
America the age of Mastodons was continued to nearly the 
present epoch, if the animal be not still living in some of 
the unexplored recesses of that vast continent." — Bakewell's 
Geology. 

Neglecting for the present the irrefutable demonstration which 
I have made, particularly in the seventh chapter, of the physical 
impossibility of organic beings coming into existence through 
the agencies of the forces and laws of inorganic nature — nay, 
more, the absurdity of the doctrine, and the certainty that man, 
and all mammiferous animals, and all birds, must have been 
created in a state of maturity both of body and mind, it is suffi- 
ciently manifest, from other considerations, that the whole " typ- 
ical plan," or ''progressive development" of animals and plants, 
in an ascending series from the lowest to the highest, must soon 
disappear from the books ; since, as will be seen by our quota- 
tions, the exuviae of the highest order of animals and plants are 
found with the most inferior in the lowest fossiliferous rocks, 
while also every variety, from the lowest to the highest, form 
the present inhabitants of the globe, and many thousand-fold 
more than the extinct species; and even the supposed extinct 
species of the lowest organization, with which Theoretical Geol- 
ogy begins its work of development, are from time to time mak- 
ing their appearance upon the theatre of life to the dismay of the 
" Science." With this geological fabric must also disappear the 
" remodellings of the earth," to adapt it to its successive creations 
and as an abode for man. According, also, to Laws in Physi- 
ology, which are as well established as any in Astronomy (see 
Chap. VII.), the physical condition of the earth, in all its present 
attributes, must have been precisely the same as now when those 
animals and plants whose exuviae are found in the lowest fossil- 
iferous rocks were in being ; since, from their exact analogies in 
organization to that of the present tribes, precisely the same phys- 
ical agents were as necessary to those reputedly earliest races as 
to the present inhabitants. 



334 PHYSIOLOGY OP THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"We have seen that it is a necessary assumption with material- 
istic writers, in expounding the origin of species, that a special 
temporary change takes place in the forces and laws of inorganic 
nature once in every few millions of years, for the special gen- 
eration, or evolution, of new species of animals, and that this 
change happens very abruptly in the former case, or where the 
elements of matter organize themselves into animals, or more 
gradually in the latter case, or where the hypothesis admits of a 
self-existent " cell" or some other " primordial form." And yet 
it is a fundamental doctrine with this school, for other purposes, 
that there has been no change in the forces and laws of nature ; 
and nature bears testimony to its truth* 

It is not my purpose here to make any farther demonstration 
against the foregoing doctrine. But as its disciples abound in 
all Christendom, I will, in addition, simply say to them that the 
time when Man is said to have been " evolved from a quadru- 
ped" is so completely lost in the mists of the "primeval past," 
that, if our materialistic Prophets be worthy of trust, the " angel 
Woman" must soon "evolve" a race of beings as much above 
mundane angels as she is above the ancestral ape — and that is 
actually threatened by the Prophets. 

The eminent Virchow assures us that — " There was a time 
when no blastema [a formative element of the simple tissues] ex- 
isted, or could have existed; and when we see that periods ar- 
rived in which the elements combined and became organic forms 
[see Chap. VII.], what else can we infer but that this wonder, this 
momentary manifestation of a latent law, happened under un- 
usual conditions?" And again — "At certain periods of the devel- 
opment of the earth unusual conditions existed, under which 
the elements [" carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen," and 
thirteen others — see page 192] entering into new combinations, ac- 
quired, in statu nascenie, vital motions, so that the usual mechanical 
conditions ivere transformed into vital conditions." 

But all this is changed now. The elements have united, and 
the work is done. Still, the mature being is just as subject to 
the " momentary manifestation of the latent law? — "The law of 
formation," says our Author, " must necessarily be an eternal 
law, and the causes of its realization can be found only in a pe- 
culiar arrangement of the natural relations" Darwin tells us, also, 



DOCTRINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OE GEOLOGY, ETC. 335 

that it is a law of nature that superior beings shall be evolved 
from the inferior ; and all these Philosophers agree that as new 
developments go on there is as great an improvement upon the 
predecessors as man is exalted above the baboon. If this be so, 
we may look out at any day for a genus of beings intermediate 
between Man and Angels, probably wearing the wings, and fully 
endowed with that spiritual faculty of clairvoyance which is al- 
ready foreshadowed in the remarkable men who have supplied 
us with this interpretation of the laws of nature. But a very 
able observer, Professor Helmholtz, of this gifted school, thinks 
that we are in no immediate danger of such an event ; and his 
opinion is the more reliable from his occupying the chair of 
Physiology in the University of Heidelberg. Thus, the emi- 
nent Professor remarks, in his Essay on "The Interaction of Nat- 
ural Forces" that — 

"For a much longer series of years than that during which 
man has already occupied the world, the existence of the present 
state of inorganic nature favorable to the duration of man seems 
to be secured, so that for ourselves, and for long generations after 
us, we have nothing to fear. But the same forces of air and water, 
and of the volcanic interior, which produced former geological 
revolutions, and buried one series of living forms after another, 
act still upon the earth's surface. They more probably will 
bring about the last day of the human race than those distant 
cosmical alterations of which we have spoken, and perhaps force 
us to make way for new and more complete living forms, as the liz- 
ards and the mammoth have given place to us and our fellow- 
creatures which now exist." — Helmholtz. 

We have seen how entirely the Baconian Philosophy is ig- 
nored by the " New Philosophy," as well as Bacon's induction 
of the existence of a Personal Creator, and of a human Soul, 
from that philosophy ; but I shall, nevertheless, present his con- 
clusions upon the questions before us, for the benefit of those 
who may be hesitating as to "which of the two to choose." 
Doubtless, Lord Bacon, when speaking of Atheism, supplies the 
true solution of the prevailing propensity among a certain class 
of scientific men either to discard from their philosophy a Per- 
sonal God, or to deny the existence of a Soul and a future life, 
while, as we have seen, both conclusions, whether so intended or 



336 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

not, are necessarily implied by every developmental doctrine. 
Thus Bacon : 

"This, also, we humbly beg, that human things may not prej- 
udice such as are Divine, neither that, from the unlocking of the 
gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, any 
thing of incredulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds 
towards Divine mysteries." — " They that deny a God destroy a 
man's nobility ; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his 
body ; and if he be not of kin to God by his Spirit, he is a base 
and ignoble creature." And again he says — " I had rather be- 
lieve all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alco- 
ran, than that this universal frame is without Mind ; and, there- 
fore, God never wrought miracles to convince Atheism, because 
His ordinary works convince it. It is true, a little philosophy in- 
clineth man's mind to Atheism, but depth in philosophy bring- 
eth men's minds about to Keligion ; for while the Mind of man 
looketh upon the second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in 
them, and go no farther; but when it beholdeth the chain of them 
confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence 
and Deit}'. Nay, even that school which is most accused of 
Atheism doth most demonstrate Keligion ; that is the school of 
Leucippus, and Democritus, and Epicurus ; for it is a thousand 
times more credible, that four mutable elements and one immu- 
table fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than 
that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should 
have produced this order and beauty without a Divine Marshal." 

Or, as Sir Isaac Newton has it — " The growth of new systems 
out of old ones [or chaos], without the mediation of a Divine Power, 
seems to me apparently absurd." And again he says — " It 
became Him who created all material things to set them in order ; 
and if He did so, it is tjnphilosophical to ask for any other or- 
igin of this world, or to pretend that it might rise out of Chaos by 
the mere laivs of nature ; though, being once formed, it may con- 
tinue by those laws." — (Opilics, Book III.) And this greatest of 
Philosophers, so devoted to matter, its forces, and its laws, was as 
profoundly convinced of the existence of a self-acting, immortal 
Soul as he was of its Creator. 

But let us look a little farther at the philosophy of this Ee- 
vealer of the laws of the Universe, interrogate his method of de- 



DOCTKINES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF GEOLOGY, ETC. 337 

tecting them and the causes of all things ; and then place them, 
along with Bacon's philosophy, in contrast with Comte's, and 
other systems which now predominate in the land to which all 
future generations will revert with a grateful reverence. Thus, 
again, the immortal Newton, in his work on Optics: 

"In the pursuit of truth we must proceed from compounds to 
ingredients, and/rom motions to the forces producing them; and in 
general, from effects to their causes, and from particular causes to 
more general ones, till the argument ends in the most general. 
This is the method of analysis. And the synthesis consists in as- 
suming the causes thus discovered and established as principles, 
and by them explaining the phenomena proceeding from them, 
and proving the explanations." From these premises he goes 
on to deduce an Omnipotent Creator as the "most general 
Cause." " When I wrote my treatise," he says, "about Systems, 
I had an eye upon such principles as might work with consider- 
ing men for the belief of Deity." And now mark what he says 
of the Infidel's philosophy of the creative forces of Nature. We 
have just seen what he says of the " unphilosophical " notion of 
supposing that the earth could have been brought into its organ- 
ized condition by " the mere laws of Nature." That was in part 
a prospective view of the "nebular hypothesis;" and here is the 
other part, which supposes that our planetary system was dislo- 
cated from the Sun as its circumference cooled down from a gas- 
eous condition to a state of solidity ; and also his view of the 
" Origin of Species." Thus — 

" Such a iconderfid uniformity in the planetary system MUST 
HAVE BEEN THE effect of choice ; and so must the uniformity in 
the bodies of animals. These and their Instincts can be the effect 
of nothing else than the Wisdom and the Skill of a Powerful, Ev- 
erlasting Agent." (See Appendix I.) 

The concerted action which is now in progress in the British 
School of the "New Philosophy" reveals its prototype as it 
flourished in Addison's time; and the reader will be interested 
with the parallel. Referring to the infidelity which then pre- 
vailed upon the subject of the Soul and its Immortality, Addi- 
son continues thus : 

" It is indeed a melancholy reflection to consider that the Brit- 
ish Nation, which is now at greater height of glory for its coun- 

22 



338 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

cils and conquests than it ever was before, should distinguish it- 
self by a certain looseness of principles, and a falling off from 
those schemes of thinking which conduce to the happiness and 
perfection of human nature. This evil comes upon us from the 
works of a few solemn Blockheads that meet together with the zeal 
and seriousness of Apostles, extirpate common sense, and propagate 
infidelity. These are the wretches who, without any show of 
wit, learning, or reason, publish their crude conceptions with an am- 
bition of appearing more wise than the rest of mankind, with no oth- 
er pretense than that of dissenting from them.'''' "Cicero, after hav- 
ing mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended 
the Divine doctrine of the immortality of the Soul, calls these 
small pretenders to wisdom who declared against it certain mi- 
nute philosophers, using a diminutive even of the word little to 
express the despicable opinion he had of them. The contempt 
he throws upon them in another passage is 3^et more remarkable, 
where, to show the mean thoughts he entertains of them, he de- 
clares he would rather be wrong with Plato than in the right 
with such company. There is, indeed, nothing in the world so 
ridiculous as one of these grave philosophical Free-thinkers, 
that have neither passions nor appetites to gratify, no heats of 
blood, nor vigor of constitution, that can turn his systems of In- 
fidelity to his advantage, or raise pleasures out of them which 
are inconsistent with the belief of an hereafter." 

Addison also remarks, in the same paper, that — " Several let- 
ters which I have lately received give me information that some 
well-disposed persons have taken offense at my using the word 
Free-thinker as a term of reproach. To set, therefore, this mat- 
ter in a clear light, I must declare that no one has a greater ven- 
eration than myself for the Free-thinkers of antiquity, who acted 
the same part in those times as the great men of the Eeformation 
did in several nations of Europe, by exerting themselves against 
the idolatry and superstition of the times in which they lived. 
It was by this noble impulse that Socrates and his disciples, as 
well as all the Philosophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, Seneca, 
with all the learned men of Rome, endeavored to enlighten their 
contemporaries amidst the darkness and ignorance in which the 
world was then sunk and buried. The great points which these 
Free-thinkers endeavored to establish and inculcate into the 



HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS ON THE SOUL, ETC. 339 

minds of men were, the formation of the Universe, the superin- 
tendence - of Providence, the perfection of the Divine Nature, the 
Immortality of the Soul, and the future state of rewards and 
punishments. On the contrary, the persons who now set up for 
Free-thinkers are such as endeavor, by a little trash of words 
and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very principles, for 
the vindication of which freedom of thought at first became 
laudable and heroic. Those apostates from reason and good 
sense can look at the glorious frame of nature without paying 
any adoration to Him that raised it ; can presume to censure the 
Deity in His ways towards men ; can level mankind with the 
beasts that perish ; can extinguish in their own minds all the 
pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a stupid 
security against the terrors of it. If one were to take the word 
priest-craft out of the mouths of those shallow monsters they 
would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the help of this 
single term that they endeavor to disappoint the good works of 
the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the hearts 
of the ignorant against the very light of nature and the common re- 
ceived opinions of mankind." "I would fain ask a minute philoso- 
pher what good he proposes to mankind by the publishing of his 
doctrines ? Will they make a man a better citizen ; or father of 
a family a more endearing husband, friend, or son? Will they 
enlarge his public or private virtues, or correct any of his frail- 
ties or vices ? What is there either joyful or glorious in such 
opinions ? Do they either refresh or enlarge our thoughts ? Do 
they contribute to the happiness, or raise the dignity of human 
nature ?" 

Addison truly says that — "All the philosophers of note in 
Greece, and all the learned men of Eome, endeavored to estab- 
lish and inculcate into the minds of men the formation of the 
Universe, the superintendency of Providence, the perfection of 
the Divine Nature, the Immortality of the Soul, and the future 
state of rewards and punishments." In opposition to this we 
have seen, what will also bear repetition, that the great leader in 
the " New Philosophy," Dr. Biichner, in his "Force and Matter" 
affirms that — 

" We do not boast of having produced any thing new. Simi- 
lar ideas have been promulgated at all times, partly by old Greek 



340 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

and Indian Philosophers ; but the necessary empirical basis fur- 
nished by modern Science was then wanting." ! ! 

Of those ancient heathen Philosophers he produces the author- 
ity of only one — old Heraclitus, surnamed The Obscure ! whose 
writings, as we have seen, were lost at an early age. But if the 
old heathen Infidels be good authority for the " New Philoso- 
phy," on account of their antiquity, why not go back a thousand 
years or more before their day — to such Philosophers as the Au- 
thor of the Book of Job (B.C. 1500), to David, Isaiah, and that 
" wisest of men," Solomon ? If they did not build upon the 
foundation of that "modern Science" which corresponds with 
the divination of Heraclitus, they at least built upon Nature, 
which the pretended science of the " New Philosophy " should 
make haste to learn is the only foundation. 

Although, our Author summons Heraclitus only, he has a 
sweeping statement which even the exigencies of " the science " 
can not justify, since the fact is exactly otherwise. Thus — 

" The Greeks," he says, " who excelled in many respects, knew 
only of departed shades ; and among the Eomans the belief in 
Immortality was very faint." 

But let us see who were the leaders of the multitude, and 
whose writings have come down to us. Plato, you know, en- 
deavored to prove the existence of the Soul before its union with 
the body, though very well aware that no physical force existed 
but in connection with matter. But, as he supposed the Soul to 
have pre-existed, he thence infers, besides many other arguments 
to the same effect, that its existence will be perpetuated after it 
leaves the body. He was also led, by its analogies to Eternal In- 
telligence, to regard it as an emanation from the Deity. 

Aristotle advocated the existence of the Soul ; but, like some 
of our own day, he believed it to be also the principle of Life, 
and inseparable from the body. His great Arabian " Interpret- 
er " and disciple, Averroes, an eminent physician of the twelfth 
century, whose writings are now rendered accessible by Eenan, 
also expounded the philosophy of the Soul. " Would to God," 
says Keckerman, " that He would raise up a translator to rescue 
the works of Averroes from the gross ignorance and barbarity of 
the preceding undertakers, for then we should be sensible of the 
great services which that Arabian did to philosophy." He was 



HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS ON THE SOUL, ETC. 341 

a native of Cordova, in Spain, where he was high-priest ana chief 
judge; but went to Morocco at the invitation of the King, where 
he became Professor in the University. His views of the Soul 
engaged an extensive and profound interest at an early day. 
There is sometimes an obscurity in his elaborate disquisitions 
upon the subject which led to very contradictory opinions of his 
belief. One of his Biographers (1784) remarks that — "He ex- 
plained Aristotle's doctrine of the unity of the Intellect in such 
a manner as to overturn the immortality of the Soul, and conse- 
quently future rewards and punishments." Bayle refers to sev- 
eral writers who speak of him as wanting in all religion because 
of his maintaining the mortality of the Soul. But it was long 
since rendered certain that he not only teaches the existence of 
the Soul, but its immortality. Dr. Fkiend, in his History of Med- 
icine, remarks that if Bayle had consulted the writings of Aver- 
roes, instead of his commentators, he would have found a very 
different account of his opinions. In one Dissertation (Phys. 
Disp. 3) he declares that the Soul is immaterial, and in another 
(Phys. Disp. 4) that it is immortal. In a poem written in his old 
age, he laments the indiscretions of his youth, and then exclaims 
— " Would to God I had been born old, and that in my youth I 
had been in a state of perfection."* 

No one ever entertained more definite and exalted views of the 
Soul than Socrates. He not only traced its existence to an Om- 
nipotent Creator, but distinguished it from all matter as an Es- 
sence per se, and inferred from its manifestations its alliance to 
the Divine Mind. He was as fully convinced, also, of its immor- 
tality, which he deduced particularly from the analogy between 
its own designs and those of its Creator. If the Author of the 
latter be immortal, so must be the former. He had, therefore, 
no fear of death, but contemplated a future life with joyful emo- 
tions, and even anxious to meet his God. He had led a life of 
holiness, morality, and usefulness. Like Cato and Cyrus, it was 

* Averroes says, in the Preface to his medical work, what is worthy the attention 
of those Physicians who disregard Principles in Medicine — "I wrote this work Col- 
liget, that is, universal, so entitled on account of the order to be observed in this Sci- 
ence, which descends from universals to particulars, for in this book I have begun 
with general rules, and hereafter, with God's assistance, shall undertake another 
treatise on particulars." 



oi2 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

his delight to meditate upon a reunion with his friends in anoth- 
er and happier world. Moreover, he considered Nature, particu- 
larly organic, as an absolute proof of its origin in a Designing 
Intelligence. What a contrast here with our modern "Scien- 
tific " Materialists ! 

When, in his seventieth year, Socrates was about to drink the 
judicial poison, he was unmoved while his surrounding friends 
were overpowered with grief, and endeavored to console them 
by an eloquent apostrophe upon the immortality of the Soul. 
"It would, indeed," said he, "be inexcusable in me to despise 
death if I were not persuaded that it will conduct me into the 
presence of God, the Eighteous Governor of the Universe, and 
into the society of just and good men ; but I draw confidence 
from the hope that something of man remains after death, and 
that the state of the good will be much better than that of the 
bad."' But it was not alone the surrounding friends who wept 
at the death of Socrates; for centuries afterwards Cicero re- 
marked, "I never read the story without tears." The piety and 
the aspirations at immortality of this great Philosopher engage 
the pen of Addison, who says, in the — "On the 

day of his execution, a little before the draught of poison was 
brought to him, entertaining his friends with a discourse on the 
immortality of the Soul, he spoke these words : ' Whether or no 
God will approve of my actions, I know not ; but this I am sure 
of, that I have at all times made it my endeavor to please Him, 
and I have a good hope that this my endeavor will be accepted 
by Him.' I will only add that Erasmus was so much transported 
with this passage of Socrates, that he could scarce forbear look- 
ing upon him as a saint. ' When I reflect,' h~ s - : n such a 
speech, pronounced by such a person, I can scarce forbear crying 
i pro nobis.* — holy Socrates, pray for us." 

Hear the old Heathen also rebuking " Modern Science." 
Thus he says — " When I was young, it is surprising how ear- 
y I desired that species of science which they call physical; 
for it appeared to me pre-eminently excellent in bringing us to 
know the causes of each phenomenon, through what each is pro- 
duced, and destroyed, and exists. But happening to hear some 
one read in a book, which he said was of Anaxagoras, that it is 
Intelligence which is the Parent of order, and Cause of all 



HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS ON THE SOUL, ETC. 343 

things, I was pleased with this Cause, and it seemed to me to 
be well that Intelligence was the Cause of all, and I considered 
that, were it so, the ordering Intelligence ordered all things, and 
placed each thing there where it was best." 

With the exception of the followers of Epicurus and Deme- 
trius, the schools of Greece taught the existence of the Soul as an 
Essence distinct from the body, and its immortal and incorrupt- 
ible nature; and, so far from being infected with Materialism, 
they were generally disposed to reject the doctrine of the resur- 
rection of the body, and to believe that the Soul will exist, after 
its separation, in an abstract condition. Many of them, however, 
supposed that the Soul would be reunited, after death, with its 
Creator, and therefore lose its individuality. 

In connection with the Grecian philosophy upon the subject be- 
fore us may be stated that of the Persian, Cyrus, of whom it is 
said in Scripture — " The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, and 
he made proclamation through all his kingdom, and also by writ- 
ing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, all the kingdoms 
of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me," &c. But 
Cyrus had no revelation about the Soul, and was as much of a 
heathen as any of his Grecian contemporaries. But his good 
sense taught him a sound philosophy upon the subject. Xeno- 
PHON tells the story of his belief, from which, also, something 
may be learned of the spiritual philosophy of the Grecian histo- 
rian. Cyrus thus — on the prospect of impending death : 

" Think not, my dearest children, that when I depart from 
you I shall be no more ; but remember that my Soul (^Pux??), 
even while I lived among you, was invisible to you ; yet by my 
actions you ivere sensible it existed in my body. Believe it, there- 
fore, existing still, though it be still unseen. How quickly 
would the honors of illustrious men perish after death if their 
Souls performed nothing to preserve their fame! For my own 
part, I could never think that the Soul, while in a mortal body, 
lives, but when departed out of it dies ; or that its consciousness 
is lost when it is discharged out of an unconscious habitation. 
But when it is freed from all corporeal alliance, then it tridy ex- 
ists." 

If we now descend to the best days of Eoman times, we shall 
find that the most enlightened urged the existence and immor- 



SU PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tality of the Soul — Cicero, Virgil, Cato, &c. Let us have a few 
examples ; and the elder Cato first, who reasoned much after the 
manner of the elder Cyrus, as already related of the latter. 
Thus Cato, speaking to Scipio, at the age of more than eighty 
years, as recorded by Cicero in his treatise on Old Age : 

" This is my persuasion, that since the human Soul exerts it- 
self with so much activity ; since it has such a remembrance of 
the past, such a concern for the future ; since it is enriched with 
so many arts, sciences, and discoveries, it is impossible but the 
being which contains all these must be immortal. No one shall 
persuade me, Scipio, that youv worthy father, or your grand- 
father Paulus, and Africanus, or Africanus his father, or uncle, 
or many other excellent men, whom I need not name, performed 
so many actions to be remembered by posterity without being 
sensible that futurity was their right. And if I may be allowed 
an old man's privilege, to speak of mj^self, do you think I would 
have endured the fatigue of so many wearisome days and nights, 
both at home and abroad, if I imagined that the same boundary 
which is set to my life must terminate my glory ? Were it not 
more desirable to have worn out my days in ease and tranquil- 
lity, free from labor, and without emulation? But I know not 
how my Soul has always raised itself, and looked forward on fu- 
turity, i-n this view and expectation, that when it shall depart 
out of life it shall then live forever; and if this were not true 
that the Soul is immortal, the Souls of the most worthy would 
not, above all others, have the strongest impulse to glory. 
What besides this is the cause that the wisest men die with the 
greatest equanimity, the ignorant with the greatest concern ? 
Does it not seem that those minds which have the most exten- 
sive views foresee they are removing to a happier condition, 
which those of a narrower sight do not perceive ? I, for my 
part, am transported with the hope of seeing your ancestors, 
whom I have honored and loved, and am earnestly desirous of 
meeting not only those excellent persons whom I have known, 
but those, too, of whom I have heard and read, and of whom I 
myself have written ; nor would I be detained from so pleasing 
a journey. Oh happy day I when I shall escape from this 
crowd, this heap of pollution, and be admitted to that Divine as- 
sembly of exalted Spirits ! When I shall go not only to those 



HEATHEN PHILOSOPHERS ON THE SOUL, ETC. 345 

great persons I have named, but to my Cato, my Son, than 
whom a better man was never born, and whose funeral rites I 
myself performed, whereas he ought rather to have attended 
mine; yet has not his Soul deserted me, but, seeming to cast a 
look on me, is gone to those habitations to which it was sensible 
I should follow him. And although I may appear to have 
borne my loss with courage, I was not unaffected with it, 
bat I comforted myself in the assurance that it would not 
be long before we should meet again, and be divorced no 
more." 

It may be incidentally stated that Cato was ambitious of that 
fame only which rested upon his labors, and should those fail 
of his hopes he desired no factitious memorials in the shape of 
brazen effigies or granite columns. It was proposed to Cato, by 
a grateful community, that a statue, with a commemorative in- 
scription, should be erected to him; but he replied — "I would 
rather have it asked why no image -has been erected to Cato, 
than why one has." * 

And so it was with Cicero, whose profound conviction of the 
existence and immortality of the Soul, and an immaterial es- 
sence, may be readily inferred from his record of Cato's remarks 
to Scipio and Laslius; but he supplies it in the most unambigu- 
ous manner, as in the following quotation : 

" If I am wrong in believing that the Souls of men are im- 
mortal, I please myself in my mistake ; nor while I live will I 
ever choose that this opinion, wherewith I am so much delighted, 
should be wrested from me. But if at death I am to be annihi- 
lated, as some minute philosophers imagine, I am not afraid lest. 
those wise men, when extinct too, should laugh at my error." 
And again he says — "Whatever that Principle is, which lives, 
perceives, understands, and wills, the same is heavenly and di- 
vine, and consequently eternal." 

" Some minute philosophers." This shows us who the Materi- 
alists were in Cicero's time, and how generally the great men 
embraced the philosophy which reason dictates. But in farther 
contrast with modern Materialism, which prides itself on Beason, 
glorifies itself as the reformer of intellectual philosophy, and re- 
jects the light of that Christian Bevelation which was so divine- 
ly anticipated in the prophetic philosophy of Socrates, and so ar- 



346 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

dently coveted by Alcibiades,* I may array against it the com- 
mon instinct of mankind, and will again refer to Cicero for his 
opinion upon the subject: 

" There is, I know not how," says Cicero, " deeply imprinted 
in the minds of men a certain presage, as it were, of a future ex- 
istence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discernible 
in the greatest geniuses and most elevated minds." And where, 
I may add, shall we look for a Materialist of intellectual ability 
who has done honor to his race, or who has not, on the contrary, 
inflicted the greatest evils upon society ? And let us here pon- 
der upon Cicero's parallel between the Soul of man and his Cre- 
ator, as well as the proof which it presents of the existence of 
such a Being, and the rebuke which it administers to the Athe- 
ist. "What," says Cicero, "can be more flippantly arrogant and 
unbecoming than for a man to suppose that he has a Mind and 
Understanding within him, but yet in all the Universe besides 
there is no such thing? Or, that those things which, with the 
utmost stretch of his Reason, he can scarce comprehend, should 
be moved and managed without any Reason at all." 

Let us now revert to those primitive days of intellectual dark- 
ness, relieved only by the blazing light that has been concentra- 
ted and stored away in the Oracles of the Old Testament, begin- 
ning with Moses, Job, &c, fifteen hundred years before Christ. 

* Addison quotes from Plato a dialogue between Socrates and Alcibiades, in which 
the former cautions Alcibiades against special supplications in prayer, as they might 
be granted to his injury. He should, therefore, leave all to the judgment of the God 
whom he addresses, and should pray after the following manner: "Give us such 
things as are good for us ; whether they are such things as we pray for, or such 
things as we do not pray for ; and remove from us those things which are hurtful, 
though they are such things as we pray for." On this occasion Socrates also de- 
terred Alcibiades from making a special supplication which he was about to offer, 
for, if granted, it might result in his injury. " We must, therefore, wait," said Soc- 
rates, "till such time as we may learn how we ought to behave ourselves towards 
God and towards men." "But when will that time come?" said Alcibiades, "and 
who is it that will instruct us ? For I would fain see this man, whoever he is. " "It 
is One," said Socrates, "who takes care of you ; but as Homer tells us that Miner- 
va removed the mist from Diomedes's eyes, that he might plainly discover both gods 
and men, so the darkness that hangs upon your mind must be removed before you 
are able to discern what is good and what is evil." "Let him remove from my 
mind," says Alcibiades, " the darkness, and what else he pleases, I am determined to 
refuse nothing he shall order me, whoever he is, so that I may become the better man 
by it." 



EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 317 

If we contemplate with, surprise and admiration the opinions of 
the Greek and Eoman Philosophers in respect to a Divine Being 
and the dignity of the Soul of man, what shall be said of these 
revealers of the greatest of all fundamental truths, the philoso- 
phy to which all things are merely subordinate. If it was but a 
glimmering of light which sanctified the great minds of Greece 
and Eome, though far advanced in philosophical inquiries, ichence 
came that sublime and harmonious system of Theology which 
runs throughout the Oracles of the Old Testament, and the com- 
mencement of which, in the inimitable Narrative of Creation, 
dates back to a period " before antiquity began ?" 

Materialism launches its admonitions against the authorized 
Expounders of Eevelation, should they presume to inculcate the 
Mosaic Philosophy — nay, the Divine communication of the His- 
tory of Creation — nay, more, the precepts of Christ in opposition 
to "science falsely so called." It is said by Dr. Hooker, in his 
Address before the British Scientific Association (1868), that — 

"A sea of time spreads its waters between that period to which 
the earliest traditions of our ancestors point, and that far earlier 
period when man first appeared upon the globe. For his track 
upon that sea man vainly questions his spiritual teachers. Along 
its hither shore, if not across it, science now offers to pilot him. 
Each fresh discovery concerning jn-e-historic man is as a pier 
built on some rock its tide has exposed, and from these piers 
arches will one day spring, that will carry him farther and far- 
ther across its depth." 'And if in his track he bears in mind 
that it is a common object of religion and science to seek to un- 
derstand the infancy of his existence — that the Laws of Mind are 
not yet relegated to the domain of the teachers of physical science, 
and that the laws of matter are not within the religious teacher's 
province, these may then work together in harmony and good- 
will. But if they would do this work in harmony, both, parties 
must beware how they fence with that most dangerous of all two- 
edged weapons, [Natural Theology— a science falsely so called, 
when, not content with trustfully accepting truths hostile to any 
presumptuous standard it may set up, it seeks to weigh the infi- 
nite in the balance of the finite, and shifts its ground to meet the 
requirements of every new fact that science establishes and every 
old error that science exposes. One of our deepest thinkers, Mr. 



348 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Herbert Spencer, has said— 'If religion and science are to be 
reconciled, the basis of the reconciliation must be this deepest, 
widest, and most certain of facts, that the powee which the Uni- 
verse manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." 

What, then, remains to " the religious teacher " if " the Power 
is utterly inscrutable ;" and if he may not " fence " with either 
Revelation, as presented in the Narrative of Creation, or with 
Natural Theology, with what " weapons " shall he meet the ad- 
versary ? Is not the whole subject — Creation, the origin of 
man, the human Soul, the Author of Inspiration — thus com- 
pletely " relegated to the domain of the teachers of physical 
science ?" 

In some form or other Biichner's sophistry, like the follow- 
ing, is ever reverberated : 

" Shall it," says Biichner, "be seriously objected to the appli- 
cation of the sciences to philosophical problems that its results 
are not agreeable ? That the truth is not always agreeable, nor 
always consolatory, nor always religious, nor always acceptable, 
is as well known as the old experience of the almost total ab- 
sence of reward, either external or internal, provided for its dis- 
ciples." And again — " What this or that man may understand 
by a governing reason, an absolute power, a universal Soul, a 
person as God, &c, is Ms own affair. The Theologians, with their 
articles of faith, must be left to themselves [though our Author 
assails them grossly] ; so the Naturalists with their science ; they 
both proceed by different routes." And farther — " The same 
bloody hatred," he says, " with which science was once perse- 
cuted by religious fanaticism would revive now, and with it the 
Inquisition and auto-da-fe, and all the horrors with which a re- 
fined zealotism has tortured humanity, would be resorted to, to 
satisfy the wishes of the Theological Cut-throats." — He also mod- 
estly affirms that — "A man in advance of his age beholds the 
struggle of the contending parties from a high point of view, and 
sees in the eccentricities of this contest merely the natural and 
necessary expression of the opposing elements which agitate our 
time ;" and concludes with the truism — " No one can doubt that 
truth will finally emerge the victory And still again — " It cer- 
tainly will not be long before the battle becomes general. Is the 
victory doubtful ? The struggle is unequal ; the opponents can 



KELIGION AND SCIENCE. 349 

not stand against the trenchant arm of physical and physiological 
Materialism, which rights with facts that every one can compre- 
hend, while the opponents fight with suppositions and presump- 
tions." 

We have seen abundantly in which quarter the "facts" and 
the "suppositions and presumptions" lie. But will the Minister 
of Religion be intimidated by such threats and denunciations as 
these, while he requires no other weapons than the Bible and 
" the God of battles?" If, on the contrary, he continues to yield, 
the day is near when he will be preaching to empty pews. Let 
him ponder upon Yirchow's declaration that — " Science and 
Faith exclude each other." "And so we see the men of Theology," 
says the Duke of Argyll [Reign of Law], " coming out to par- 
ley with the men of science — a white flag in their hands, and say- 
ing — « If you will let us alone, we will do the same by you. 
Keep to your own province ; do not enter ours. The Reign of 
Law which you proclaim we admit outside these walls, but not 
within them. Let there be peace between us.' — But this will 
never do. There can be no such treaty dividing the domain of 
truth. No bargaining, no fencing off the grounds — no form of 
process will avail to bar this right of way. Blessed right, en- 
forced by blessed power !" 

How far the defiant attitude of " Science," and the fear of 
being " behind the age," may deter the Theological Profession 
from an interference with the " New Philosophy," remains to be 
seen. Many of its members in Europe have given in their adhe- 
sion, and there are those among them who are entitled to the 
honor of the Presidency of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Infidelity. 

There are many difficulties with Ministers of Religion as it re- 
spects a proper interpretation of the Mosaic Narratives of Crea- 
tion and the Flood. They are generally uninformed of Geolog- 
ical facts, and of the constitution of Organic Nature as contra- 
distinguished from inorganic ; they fear the triumph of Infidel- 
ity over Religion unless they countenance the doctrines which 
Infidelity declares to be "scientific ;" and they fear, also, the im- 
putation of ignorance if they repel its teaching, and dislike to be 
so constantly reminded of the " persecutions of Galileo." It con- 
stitutes, therefore, an alarming conjuncture for the present age. 



350 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

These apprehensions have been often expressed, especially by 
theological writers upon Geology, of which the following exam- 
ple occurs in the Eev. Dr. J. Pye Smith's u Relation between the 
Holy Scriptures and Geological Sciences" (1839). Thus, referring 
to the disclosures in Geology which are supposed to indicate a 
high antiquity of the earth, &c. ; and while defending his own 
course in relation to it, he remarks : 

"But can we not throw ourselves into the arms of our breth- 
ren in the faith, who, as we have seen, summarily dispose of the 
whole matter? We can not. First, our own convictions stand 
in the way. The facts can not be set aside," &c. M Secondly, 
the body of scientific men in every country would only be con- 
firmed in their hostility, and the more completely discharged from 
keeping terms with us; while we should be the men that laid 
Christianity under the feet of its adversaries" — our Author himself 
co-operating with that "body of scientific men," whom he at the 
same time regards as " the adversaries of Christianity." 

We have already seen how much Christianity has been affect- 
ed by these concessions, and the sequel will more fully disclose 
its prospects for a few coming generations. But how unfair the 
exaction that the Minister of Beligion should limit his teachings 
to Divine Eevelation, and leave to an affected "science" its own 
unmolested way, when that very "science" is sapping Eevela- 
tion at its threshold, and carrying dismay into those minds which 
have regarded the Soul and its Immortality as established facts, 
and not unfrequently with labored effort reasoning God Himself 
out of existence. Indeed, all defenders of the Narratives of Cre- 
ation and the Flood are hurled back by Theoretical Geology into 
" the Dark Ages," even for thinking that there may be some rea- 
son to pause before we abandon what are so apparently Divine 
Revelations, and especially should an attempt be made to show 
the baseless nature of those speculations which would place our 
philosophy where it was found by Bacon, and which brought 
upon Galileo the odium of the Inquisition ; and all this, too, 
when it is conceded by Theoretical Geology that its innovations 
" startle all our preconceived opinions of the age of our globe, 
and of the origin of its inhabitants." 

It is not the defenders of Revelation who have become the 
"persecutors of science," or who are in any respect intolerant of 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 351 

the progress of knowledge. On the contrary, they are the very 
ones who would protect the Sciences against the corruptions of 
the " New Philosophy " that is inflicted upon the world in the 
name of "Science;" and the advocates of that "Philosophy" 
have ingeniously shifted from themselves upon the disciples of 
Nature and Eevelation the odium of "persecution." " Science," 
indeed! What kind of science is that which consists alone of a 
crude assemblage of facts that are daily contradicting themselves, 
and without a single law or principle that can be predicated of 
those facts? A "science" which mistakes speculations for prin- 
ciples ; while, as I have variously shown, those very speculations 
are not only contradicted by the established facts and laws of 
Nature, but are distinguished by remarkable absurdities — partic- 
ularly in all that relates to the fundamental ground of Theoret- 
ical Geology — the "typical plan," the "creation of animals and 
plants by the forces of inorganic nature," all the "development- 
al " doctrines. (See, particularly, Chapters VI., VII., and VIII.) 

But I am not upon the defensive. I charge Theoretical Geol- 
ogy with that intolerance and that relapse of science and philos- 
ophy which it imputes to the defenders of Eevelation, and I shall 
have endeavored to prove it. Does it not also behoove the Min- 
ister of Religion, who is not only excluded from the "pale of sci- 
ence," but whose theological labors, whether in the pulpit or 
through the press, are regarded as worthless — does it not be- 
hoove him, I say, to buckle on the armor of Christ more zeal- 
ously than ever, not only for the sake of mankind, but for his 
own personal dignity and his aspirations at a life of usefulness 
that may be perpetuated through the coming generations, when 
he listens to commendations of Hume's anathemas by the Presi- 
dent of the "British Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence," Professor Huxley, of which the following is one of the 
examples, in his late celebrated Lecture on the "Physical Basis 
of Life" Thus he says that — 

" Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many 
problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us 
that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their es- 
sence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the 
attention of men who have ivorh to do in the world. And thus 
ends one of his Essays — ' If we take in hand any volume of Di- 



352 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

vinitj or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, Does it con- 
tain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? ]STo. 
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of 
fact and existence? No. Commit it, then, to the flames ; for it 
can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.'' Permit me to 
ENFORCE THIS MOST WISE ADVICE." 

But I may here remind Professor Huxley of what he conceded 
when returning thanks to Dr. Hooker, President of the British 
Scientific Association in 1868, for his Address, in saying that — 
« There is another reason why I am attached to him, and it is, 
perhaps, one which many here can understand — both he and I 
are seafaring men, to whom the smell of salt water and the sing- 
ing of sea-songs have a different meaning than to most other people" 

His election as President of the Association soon followed, not- 
withstanding his work on " Man's Place in Nature," and his rep- 
utation as " the ablest English advocate of Darwin's theory of 
the Origin of Species." The whole tone of this movement is de- 
noted by the remarks of Professor Tyndall, on seconding the 
motion for the vote of thanks, when he said — 

"I do believe, if the ranks of science were sought out, investi- 
gated, and searched through, and if you wanted two men who 
would show, in their own persons, an utter forgetfulness of self 
and devotedness to the truth they show they seek and love, you 
could not find two better examples of self-abnegation and utter 
self-devotedness than the man who has just spoken, and the man 
of whom he has just spoken — Edwin Darwin and Joseph Dal- 
ton Hooker. [Loud cheers."] — Norfolk Chronicle, England, Au- 
gust 20, 1868. 

It is here worthy of remark that President Huxley, in his In- 
augural Address before the British Scientific Association (1870), 
fulfilled his duty by devoting his Address mainly to a recapitu- 
lation of the experiments by which it had been many years ago 
incontrovertibly settled that the infusoria which appear in stale 
decoctions of meat are not generated by the forces of nature, but 
are the products of ova floating in the atmosphere. Having 
magnanimously repeated to the Association that marvellous 
demonstration of the " progress of modern science " in its settle- 
ment of an obvious fact, he proceeded to announce his own 
"faith" in spontaneous generation, and in the origin of the organic 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 353 

world, in the following manner, as reported in the London Ath- 
enaeum : 

"Looking back," he said, " through the prodigious vista of 
the past, I find no record of the commencement of Life, and 
therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclu- 
sion as to the conditions of its appearance." Nevertheless — " If it 
were given me to look back upon the earth when it was passing 
through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more 
see again, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of liv- 
ing protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see it 
appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed with the power 
of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such mat- 
ter as ammonia, carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, water," &c. 
["Three Cheers" at the conclusion of the Address.] 

Here I would again refer the reader particularly to the sev- 
enth chapter for a refutation not only of the origin of living be- 
ings in the elements of matter through the forces and laws of in- 
organic nature, as inculcated in the foregoing quotations, and of 
all the developmental doctrines, but a demonstration of the ne- 
cessity of the creation of man and animals in a state of maturit}^. 

In an article dated Liverpool, September 23, 1870, and repub- 
lished in the New York Tribune of October 15th, occurs the 
following remark : 

" The characteristic of the Liverpool meeting, for 1870, of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, has been 
that of the emancipation of Science from Theology. Dr. Hooker 
was the first President who asserted its independence. But Pro- 
fessor Huxley has acquired a more terrible name, and his eleva- 
tion to the Primacy of Science in England was regarded with 
consternation. The Guardian, the chief Church of England or- 
gan, confesses that it breathes freely noio that Professor Huxley 
has spoken, and has pointed no scientific mitrailleuse at the 
Bishops." 

But the drollest thing of all that has issued from " modern 
science " is the project of promoting its doctrines by lay -preach- 
ing, notwithstanding its " emancipation from Theology," as 
lately exemplified in a series of so-called "Lay Sermons" by 
the Harlequin of Science. They will doubtless make many con- 
verts to the worship of that " unknowable " which presides over 

23 



354 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the creative forces and laws of inorganic nature, particularly the 
Sermon on the " Origin of Species." The freshness of novelty 
pervades all the sermons. This, as in the one just mentioned, is 
particularly manifest in the manner in which he salutes the Cler- 
ical Preachers in another Sermon, of whom he says — " They are 
at present divisible into three sections — an immense body, who 
are ignorant and speak out ; a small proportion, who know and 
are silent; and a minute minority, who know and speak accord- 
ing to their knowledge." The merits of their Sermons are meas- 
ured by the same criterion, as already quoted from our Author 
on another occasion, and which would "commit them to the 
flames" (page 352). This opinion of Clerical Sermons is fol- 
lowed by a corresponding suggestion of a novel method of hal- 
lowing the Sabbath Day — "Would there," he asks, "really be 
any thing wrong in using a part of Sunday for the purpose of 
instructing those who have no other leisure in a knowledge of 
the phenomena of nature, and of man's relation to nature? I 
should like to see a Scientific Sunday-school in every parish," 
&c. What he would inculcate in these Sunday-schools as to 
"Man's relation to nature" may be inferred from the remark 
that "I hold with the materialist that the human body is a ma- 
chine, all the operations of which will, sooner or later, be ex- 
plained on physical principles ; that we shall arrive at a mechan- 
ical equivalent of consciousness and volition." "And if I say that 
thought is a property of matter, all that I can mean is, that, actu- 
ally or possibly, the consciousness of extension and the conscious- 
ness of resistance accompany all other sorts of consciousness. 
Why and how they are thus related is an insoluble mystery." 

Such are examples of the "Lay Sermons " which our Author 
would substitute for Clerical Sermons, as avowed particularly in 
our quotation at page 352. 

One of my objects in writing this work is to render my hum- 
ble aid to the Minister of Eeligion in enabling him to assume a 
defiant attitude towards the invader, and lay him prostrate at 
the vestibule of Science, where he stands, grim-visaged, battering 
the Temple, on his reckless way to the dark regions of Material- 
ism and Pantheism. The Bible is nowhere opposed to the in- 
terests of Science, but the .Record of Creation, alone, embraces 
the foundation of all the Sciences, and defies, as I shall show, 



EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 355 

the most rigorous scrutiny. Nor does it fear that one fact can 
be found in opposition to the plain teachings of Eevelation. On 
the contrary, Nature is an essential part of Eeligion, and they 
must be consistent. It is not, therefore, an investigation of Na- 
ture to which Religion should object, but that hasty interpreta- 
tion which arrays Nature in opposition to Eevelation without 
regard to countervailing facts, too impatient to await the progress 
of discovery. This ground Eeligion will not surrender, and if it 
can not sustain itself by the clear and consistent doctrines of the 
Bible, it should qualify itself to take the field, and fight the bat- 
tle with the weapons of Science and Philosophy, with those facts 
which the God of nature has provided for its ultimate triumph. 
But the qualification is not to be obtained without great labor, 
and must therefore be limited to a few, and the results delivered 
over to the multitude. But, above all, do not exclude the Bible 
from common schools; and, as I write this sentence, there lies 
before me the report of an Address by the Eev. Dr. Peabody, 
Professor in Harvard University, upon the advantages of the 
Bible in Common Schools, in which he exclaims — " Heaven for- 
bid that we should now take a retrograde step towards barbar- 
ism, from which the Bible alone has rescued us." Let the Inter- 
preter of Eevelation go on expounding the Narratives of Crea- 
tion and the Flood according to their manifest import; let him 
go to the Narratives themselves for information, and not to The- 
oretical Geology, and he will have accomplished much towards 
the overthrow of materialism, and every thing for Deity. Their 
literal meaning, as I shall have shown, is contradicted by noth- 
ing in Geology, but, on the contrary, is sustained throughout all 
their details by the soundest principles in Science. It is only a 
false interpretation of the facts, and "science falsely so called," 
that lie in the way of that faith which those wonderfully exact 
and consistent Narratives inculcate — unimpeachable, I say, and 
show, in a single detail, and each Narrative sustained in all its 
parts not only by its own internal proof, but by the concurring 
testimony of all that is known of the constitution and laws of or- 
ganic and inorganic nature. I say, therefore, let not the Minis- 
ter of Eeligion be intimidated by the frowns of the "New 
Philosophy," nor diverted from his allegiance by any persuasion 
or admonitory appeals of that " philosophy." Let him rather 



356 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

listen co the warning of one so thoroughly qualified as the Duke 
of Argyll to contrast the Authority of Kevelation with the 
geological speculations upon Nature. In the "Keign of Law,' 7 
we are admonished that — 

"No man who thoroughly accepts a principle in the philoso- 
phy of nature which he feels to be inconsistent with a doctrine 
of Religion can help having his belief in that doctrine shaken and 
undermined." 

And it should be also recollected that the fossils of the rocks, 
the diluvian bowlders, and other drift, the coal formations, vol- 
canic eruptions, &c, are embraced by "Modern Science" under 
the "Philosophy of Nature," and that these accidents are the 
foundation of the speculations which Theoretical Geology has 
designated as a Science, but without a law or principle ! 

I shall now enter upon the consideration of subjects which 
have mostly only a relative bearing upon my demonstration of 
the Soul ; and yet such is their nature, they establish the exist- 
ence of the Divine attribute of man, while their rejection is em- 
ployed in advancing the interests of Materialism in all its phases 
. — I mean the Narratives of Creation and the Flood. I shall 
therefore assign this discussion to other chapters, and in part 
to Appendices. 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 357 



CHAPTER XL 

NARRATIVES OF CREATION AND THE FLOOD. — THEIR GENERAL 
BEARING UPON THE DOCTRINES OF MATERIALISE, AND PRO- 
GRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF LIVING BEINGS. — THEOLOGICAL 
GEOLOGISTS. — ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. — THE TELESCOPE 
AND THE STARS. 

In justice to the cause, both as to the Soul and its Creator, it 
must be conceded that Theoretical Geology, by means of an ac- 
cumulation of misapplied facts and a pretended science, has great- 
ly affected the faith of many pious and enlightened Divines in 
the Mosaic Narrative of Creation, while that of the Flood appears 
to have been very generally abandoned as a mythological fable, 
and to the general detriment of religious faith.* The result has 

* It appears that a common disbelief in the Noachian Flood had arisen in Europe 
as early as its renunciation by the Rev. Dr. Buckland, according to the report of M. 
Boue to the Geological Society of France, in 1831, and which the Rev. President 
Hitchcock quotes in the following manner : 

" 'After having thus debated the question of the Deluge and of diluvium, we 
might believe that no enlightened man would venture to maintain such reveries. Nev- 
ertheless, such are the singidar notions that have not ceased to be propagated by well- 
organized heads in England as well as in France.' Yet M. Boue represents nearly 
all intelligent men in Europe as having abandoned the idea of a universal deluge. 
'The idea of a universal Mosaic or historic deluge,' says he, 'can not be sustained. 
Such is the opinion of the larger part of the Geologists of the Continent, and the 
proofs of its absurdity are so evident, that the Lutheran Clergy have long since 
abandoned it ; and lately the English Clergy, the most tenacious of all, have yielded 
up their arms.' 'As to Germany, a long time ago its Clergy of those communions 
have wisely abandoned the idle questions.'" — American Biblical Repository, Janu- 
ary 7, 1837. 

But that is not the worst of it ; for our distinguished Geologist (President Hitch- 
cock), who has been largely instrumental in giving the present direction to public 
opinion, both as to the Narrative of Creation and of the Flood, in returning to the 
latter at a subsequent time, remarks that — 

"We freely confess that we cannot explain the phenomena in any other way than 
by admitting the occurrence of such a catastrophe. But we have no disposition to 
be dogmatical on the subject ; and Ave have endeavored to show that the denial of 
any such deluge does not bring us at all in collision with the inspired history. " ! ! — 
Ibid., January 7, 1838. 

Moreover, Theoretical Geology has so imperiously decided upon an indefinite pro- 



358 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

been, as we have seen, a common belief in the origin of living 
beings through the forces of inorganic nature, or some other de- 
velopmental system, which is not only pantheistic, but totally 
opposed to the existence of a Soul. The modified doctrine 
which evades the supposed creative power of the elements of 
matter, and begins with "protoplasm," or some other "primor- 
dial form," has brought in a multitude of adherents ; and others 
have given it their countenance because they have preferred the 
assumption that the laws of nature are endowed with powers ca- 
pable of evolving new and higher species of animals out of the 
inferior, when once started on their way out of the "primordial," 
to the doctrine of successive and distinct formations. They dis- 
like the disjointed typical system ; and Theoretical Geology as- 
sures them that the o?ie, consistent, and unchangeable whole of the 
Narratives of Creation and the Flood is contradicted by " modern 
science." But if the reader will consult the opinion of Buffon, 
both as to the origin of the Earth and its inhabitants, he will find 
that "modern science," upon the question before us, has made 
but very little progress for the last hundred years; while Buffon 
has the merit of penetrating into the far-distant future. 

Theoretical Geology has assumed the right of dictating the 
proper interpretation of the Narratives of Creation and the Flood ; 
although, in reality, it has no faith in either. Let us have a com- 
mon example of this. Hugh Millee, in controverting Dr. Kit- 
to's arguments in favor of the general Deluge, remarks that — 

" It may be well not to test too rigidly the value of the re- 
mark, meant to be at least of the nature of argument, when we 
find him saying that — 'J. plain man sitting down to read the Scrip- 
ture account of the Deluge would have no doubt of its universal- 
ity!' Perhaps not. But it is at least equally certain that plain 
men who set themselves to deduce from Scripture' the figure of 
the planet we inhabit had as little doubt, until corrected by the Ge- 
ographer, that the earth was a great plain — not a sphere ; that 
plain men who set themselves to acquire from Scripture some 

longation of the Mosaic Days, that it will abandon the Record of Creation sooner 
than surrender the testimony of the fossiliferous rocks. In speaking of a contingen- 
cy which is not unlikely to happen, the foregoing Authority declares that — 

" Had the remains of man been found among the earliest organic relics, while the 
Bible represents him as the last being created, it would have been difficult to see how 
the two records could be reconciled." — Rev. Dr. Hitchcock's Elementary Geology. 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 359 

notion of the planetary motions had no doubt, in the same way, 
until corrected by the Astronomer, that it was the earth that 
rested, and the sun that moved round it ; and that plain men 
who have sought to determine from Scripture the age of the 
earth have had no doubt, until corrected by the Geologist, that it 
was at most not more than six thousand years old." — Testimony 
of the Hocks. 

That is the usual sarcasm, along with the stale comparisons 
with the "persecutors of Galileo," and the "ignorance and big- 
otry of the Doctors of Salamanca." In the same way, also, we 
shall see that Theoretical Geology dismisses every statement in 
the Narratives of Creation and the Flood, reserving to itself the 
right of " correcting " our faith in either. It should be said, also, 
that besides the foregoing misrepresentation of the Scriptures in 
regard to the form of the earth, Theoretical Geology rejoices in 
the expression that the " Sun and Moon stood still," and it is a 
standing position that the Bible is opposed to Science. But the 
Astronomer himself would employ the same language on a like 
occasion, and which is quite as scientific as the " rising and set- 
ting of the sun," &c. Nor is there any foundation for the as- 
sumption that the Scriptures violate Science in teaching that the 
earth is flat, and that all the heavenly bodies revolve about it. 
No such doctrines are to be found in the Bible. On the contra- 
ry, in the following sublime passage from Isaiah, not only is the 
spherical form of the earth announced, but, by any fair construc- 
tion of language, the writer regards the earth as only a point in 
the midst of apparently endless worlds, and therefore inculcates 
any thing rather than " a revolution of the heavens about the 
earth." Indeed, considering how little was known of astronomy, 
we seem to be reading a communication from the Creator ex- 
actly as if revealed to the Prophet. Thus — 

"It is He that sitteth upon the Circle of the earth, and the in- 
habitants thereof are as grasshoppers ; that stretcheth out the 
heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell 
in." Nor did Science ever produce any thing, in a condensed 
form, so comprehensive, philosophical, and exactly scientific in 
all its details, as the Narrative of Creation ; which it is my pur- 
pose to show in a subsequent chapter. 

Although it is not at all an object of the Bible to teach the 



360 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sciences, yet, as they are all founded upon Nature, it must be re- 
garded as a Providential circumstance that none of its teachings 
conflict with Nature, unless clearly miraculous, or obviously 
metaphorical. But admitting that fallacies in Science may be 
found in Scripture writings, when their penmen are manifestly 
speaking without Divine instruction, it would have no bearing 
whatever upon the events of Creation and the Flood. Such mis- 
takes of the writers, who, it is agreed on all hands, had no scien- 
tific purposes in view, would be of no consequence whatever as 
it respects the intended objects of the Bible. Nor is it of any 
consequence, so far as Eevelation is concerned, whether mankind 
believe that the earth is round or flat, or turns upon its axis, or 
is the centre of the Universe. But far otherwise with the Nar- 
ratives of Creation and the Flood, in which the Almighty speaks 
in propria persona. They are Records of Divine Statements, just 
as they were delivered, in ipsissimis verbis, intended in a literal 
sense, representing events entirely out of the order of nature, 
and they are addressed to the faith and common sense of all man- 
kind, and therefore to the understanding of all. Could the Nar- 
rative of Creation be absolutely contradicted by geological facts, 
it would in no respect affect the obvious meaning of any of its 
statements, nor invalidate the wonderful consistency and harmo- 
ny of the collective whole, or the Unity of Design by which they 
are distinguished. It would only prove them to be the most art- 
ful fabrications that have ever been invented. And as to the 
Narrative of the Flood, the onty objection worthy of attention 
that has ever been alleged against it is the supposed want of a 
sufficient capacity of the Ark. The miraculous nature of the 
Deluge is beyond the assault of criticism. 

Nevertheless, Theoretical Geology has quiet possession of the 
field ; and I have stated some of the expedients, and many anal- 
ogous examples will have been presented, by which Theoretical 
Geology has become, by almost common consent, the expounder 
of the Narratives of Creation and the Flood. I may say, also, 
that those of the Clerical Profession who attempt to enlighten 
the public upon the profound subjects which relate to the mech- 
anism and the constitution of the various parts of the globe — its 
solid contents, its water, its atmosphere, and their individual and 
collective relations to organic beings, and which can be at all 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 3G1 

scientifically discussed only by those who are acquainted with 
the whole circle of the sciences — not only betray an ignorance of 
the subjects, but generally rely for a superficial information upon 
those Geologists who have accepted Laplace's avowedly athe- 
istical hypothesis of the evolution of the solar system, and Dar- 
win's assumptions of the origin of species ; the last of which, ac- 
cording to President Hooker, in his late Address before the Brit- 
ish Association for the Advancement of Science — " is an accept- 
ed doctrine with almost ever}?- philosophical Naturalist, includ- 
ing, it will always be understood, a considerable proportion who 
are not prepared to admit that it accounts for all that Mr. Dar- 
win assigns it."* 

Of the latter denomination may be ranked, at least inferen- 
tially, the late work by the eminent Divine, the Rev. Dr. J. P. 
Thompson, on "Man in Genesis and in Geology" And here I 
arrive at my purpose of showing the evil that may accrue to so- 
ciety from any approval or toleration by the Minister of Religion 

* It is remarkable how little conscious of their own defects in the sciences, espe- 
cially of Anatomy and Physiology, are some of our ablest and most eminent writers 
in other departments of knowledge. Here, for example, is an erudite Professor of 
Chemistry, and of distinguished Authority in Theoretical Geology, who allows the 
dangers by which it is surrounded, and the necessity oi an extensive range of learn- 
ing for its proper understanding. Thus, Professor Silliman, in his Appendix to 
Bakewell's Geology : 

"The subject before us (Theoretical Geology) is not one which can be advanta- 
geously discussed with the people at large. A wide range of facts, a familiarity with 
physical science, an extensive course of education, are necessary to the satisfactory 
exhibition of geological truths, and especially to establish their connection and har- 
mony with the Mosaic History. It is a subject exclusively for the learned, or at least 
for the studious and reflecting; but as regards their own mental furniture, it can be 
no longer neglected with safety by those whose province it is to illustrate and defend 
the Sacred Writings." 

The Rev. J. Pye Smith quotes, approvingly, in his Geology, another distinguished 
Theoretical Geologist, the Rev. Professor Sedgwick, as saying that — 

"Book-learning, in whatever degree Authors may be gifted with it, is but a piti- 
ful excuse for writing mischievous nonsense [on Geology] ; and that to a Divine or a 
man of letters ignorance of the Laws of Nature and of material phenomena is then 
only disgraceful when he quits his own ground and pretends to teach philosophy." 

And yet neither of these Rev. Authors had any knowledge of the most indispen- 
sable, to Theoretical Geology, of the "Laws of Nature" — the laws of Physiology, a 
proper acquaintance with which gives the fullest assurance that organic beings were 
originally the direct work of an intelligent, personal, creative Power, and that the an- 
imal kingdom was created in a state of maturity both of Mind and body, as I have 
demonstrated in the seventh chapter. 



362 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of doctrines that are in fatal conflict with the best established 
Eevelations of God, however much thej may profess to be 
founded upon " scientific facts;" and I shall confine myself to 
English and American writers, who may be considered " types 
of the most accomplished Geological" Theologists. The intro- 
duction of such authorities supplies me, also, with opportunities 
for desirable comment. 

The work referred to above bears the date of 1870 ; but 
" The matter of the volume," says the Author, " was originally 
given in a series of Sunday-evening lectures, largely extempora- 
neous in form, and. purposely popular, almost colloquial in style." 
It is said of the work, in a Eeview in the New York Daily 
Tribune of October 22, 1869, that— 

" Darwinism, to his mind, is not a spectre of infidelity, nor the 
confirmation of Geology the overthrow of the Bible, nor the 'An- 
tiquity of Man,' if proved, the destruction of Eeligion." " His 
treatment of Darwinism is remarkably candid ; and he admits 
that the theory is as consistent with the doctrine of creation by 
a personal God as any other." " Dr. Thompson wisely takes the 
ground that the ' Origin of Life ' is yet a mystery, and must be 
referred back to Divine Power." Moreover, the Eeviewer says 
that — " Such is the defective training in the theological schools, 
that the great implement with which the army of science has 
won almost all its grand victories in modern progress — the proc- 
ess of scientific reasoning — is an instrument with which the 
young Theologians are almost utterly unacquainted." "They 
fight with the ghost of the past, instead of the bona fide and ter- 
rible FOES OF THE DAY." 

Having thus introduced our Author's work, my object will 
not be attained without quoting from it rather extensively, as it 
is, indirectly, in legal phraseology, for " benefit of Clergy," but 
more immediately for removing a stumbling-block in the way 
of my demonstration of the substantive existence of the Soul. 
Whoever undertakes this demonstration will act wisely in con- 
tributing his aid towards baffling all efforts at undermining our 
faith in the literal meaning of the Narratives of Creation and the 
Flood. They are parts of a common whole, manifestly the pro- 
ductions of one Great Mind, and demand a simultaneous corrob- 
oration. In the farther execution of my task I shall call to my 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 363 

aid the most responsible dissentients ; but mainly for the purpose 
of giving to the opponent his best defense. 

Going on, therefore, with our Eev. Author — when, speaking 
for himself, he comes to Darwin's defense in the following man- 
ner. After remarking in respect to — "The development of one 
out of another, Mr. Darwin has been misunderstood and some- 
what misrepresented," he goes on to say that — 

" Darwin teaches simply that the variation of species is induced 
by causes which already existed in the common progenitor [or 
1 primordial form']. Neither does he teach organization by nat- 
ural causes alone. Divergence by selection, resulting at last in 
prominent variations of type, he ascribes to natural causes ; but 
the previous question — l Hoio organic matter began to exist 1 — he 
does not touch at all. He says, practically — ' Given the origin of 
organic matter, my object is to show in consequence of what laws, 
or what demonstrable properties of organic matter and of its 
environments, such states of organic Nature as those with which 
we are acquainted must have come about.' " 

The doctrine that evades the question at issue by surmising 
the creation of some simple form of " organic matter," and then 
leaving it to its development into organic beings through the 
agencies of inorganic nature, is, according to the absolute facts 
of Science (as I have shown extensively in the sixth, seventh, 
and eighth chapters), as gross an assumption, and as purely athe- 
istical as the doctrine which ascribes the origin of that " organic 
matter " to a coalescence of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, 
and thirteen other elements, through their inherent properties. 
The former assumption I have shown to be generally a mere pre- 
tense, in the hope that the word "created" may secure a more 
favorable reception. But I speak of the doctrine as inculcated 
by " modern science," not of individuals who may or may not 
comprehend its merits. Of the latter class is the Eev. J. Pye 
Smith, but to whom his imputation to others may be well ap- 
plied (and which I shall place in capitals), in the following ex- 
tract from his work on Geology ; where he not only sustains La- 
place's nebular hypothesis, but goes even farther than Darwin in 
his speculations upon the origin of living beings by commencing 
with the elements of matter. Thus our Expounder of Eevelation : 

" The Nebular hypothesis, ridiculed as it has been by persons 



364 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



regarded as in a very high degree probable by some of the finest 
and most Christian minds. If I may venture to utter my own 
impressions, I must profess it as the most reasonable supposition, 
and the correlate of the nebular theory, that God originally gave 
being to the primordial elements of things, the very small num- 
ber of simple bodies, endowing each with its own wondrous 
properties. Then, that the action of those properties, in the ways 
which his wisdom ordained, and which we call laws, produced, 
and is still producing, all the forms and changes of organic and 
inorganic natures ; and that the series is by Him destined to pro- 
ceed, in combinations and multiplications EVEB NEW, without limit 
of space or end of duration." ! ! 

What shall be said in justification of thus calling, as it were, 
upon the Supreme Being to sanction and thus to enforce upon 
the reader such a tissue of assumptions that are in the most ab- 
solute conflict with the admitted facts and laws of nature ; as I 
have variously demonstrated, in respect to organic beings in 
Chapter VII., and the nebular hypothesis in Appendix I. In 
regard to the latter (avowedly atheistical hy Laplace, its project- 
or), our Eev. Author says, in a note — 

" If the reader be not already acquainted with the nature and 
reasons of this doctrine, he owes himself a great duty. Let him 
consult Prof. Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, Book II., Chap. 
VII. ; Dr. Mantell's Wonders of Geology, Lect. L, and Prof. Nich- 
ol's Architecture of the Heavens." 

We may well suppose that such a believer in " modern sci- 
ence " adopts the numerous geological regions of development 
of animals and plants, which, he says, occurred "perhaps at dif- 
ferent and respectively distant epochs." 

Nor does the opposition to the Narratives of Creation and the 
Flood proceed from any want of consideration of its effects upon 
our faith in Revelation. The Reverend Interpreter last quoted 
shall supply an example of this. When speaking of the Narra- 
tive of the Flood, he says : 

" Such are the objections which present themselves against 
the interpretation which, with grief I acknowledge, is generally 
admitted, in relation to the Scriptural narrative of the Deluge. 
It is a painful position in which I stand. I seem to be taking 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 365 

the part of an enemy, adducing materials for skepticism, and doing 
nothing to remove them. But this situation for me is inseparable 
from The Plan of these lectures ; the only plan that appeared 
practicable." 

Then why not adopt "a plan" that does not "take the part 
of an enemy?" Or why deliver the Lectures, or publish the 
mischievous book ? 

As to the doctrine of development, the Eev. Dr. Thompson 
thinks, in his work on Geology, that — "Professor Ow EX protests 
wisely, against invoicing miraculous power to initiate every distinct 
species." " Owen agrees with Darwin in the theory of develop- 
ment to this extent, that he traces the origin of existing species 
to extinct species, through the operation of a secondary cause." 

That is in conformity with the geological doctrine of success- 
ive extinctions and developments, according to the typical plan. 
But our Eeverend Author defends the distinct creation of man. 
How then can he think Owen was "wise" in his protest? If 
every "distinct species" of animals was not the result of "Mi- 
raculous Power," by what logic would it follow that man was an 
exception? Or, if "existing species of animals owe their origin 
to extinct species, through the operation of a secondary cause," 
then certainly man must "be traced" to the same origin. This 
is demanded as well by anatomical structure and physiological 
processes as by consistency in the Creator, for the organization 
and functions are the same in man and all the higher tribes of 
animals, and one undeviating plan obtains throughout organic 
nature. And according to the same fundamental rule, if any 
species of animals or plants were the direct act of a Personal 
Creator, then was equally so every species. There is no escape 
from this fundamental ground, and it can not be too constantly 
before the reader. What, indeed, can be more revolting to Sci- 
ence, or to the Creator's consistency, than the notion that He 
created a certain number of species, and then delegated the rest 
to " the operation of a secondary cause !" (See Chapters VII. 
and VIII.) 

Again, our Author says: "It is not the Bible that traces the 
origin of man back to the monkey or the trilobite — this makes 
him the child of God, created in his image, for his companion- 
ship and his glory.'' 1 



366 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Nor does the Bible "trace back the origin of the monkey or 
trilobite," any more than it does man to other species of animals ; 
but it places their origin exactly upon common ground. Why, 
then, I respectfully ask our distinguished Author, is not the 
Bible an equally good Authority for a like creation of all organic 
beings ? Is it " wise to invoke miraculous Power to initiate 
man," the last in the series, and leave the development of the 
monkey, &c, to " a secondary cause ?" The statement as to the 
creation of animals, and the precise time of their creation, is as 
explicit as in regard to man. Of birds and aquatic animals it is 
said that " (rod created every living thing," &c, and that this 
was done on the fifth day. On the sixth, " God made the beast 
of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind ; and God 
saw that it was good." Then follows the creation of man on the 
same day ; and if there is any trust to be reposed in the Narra- 
tive, are we at liberty to disjoint this one harmonious work of 
the sixth day, and pervert its exact and coincident statements to 
clear the way for any chimerical hypothesis that Geology may 
suggest — so only it will surrender to Eeligion the "Image of 
God ?" Our Author, however, remarks that — " The writer of the 
first chapter of Genesis does not give the processes of creation, 
but the succession of phenomena." Is not this, therefore, a very 
good proof that he had no theoretical views to gratify, and that 
the "processes of creation" could be alone comprehended by 
their Author ? But suppose the Writer of the Narrative had 
attempted to describe the modus operandi of the Creative Energy, 
what would Theoretical Geology have then said of the Eecord ? 
Or, suppose, what is not improbable, and what Theoretical Geol- 
ogy should fear, that the bones of man may be found in the 
depths of the coal-fields, what then ? 

I shall hereafter cite our Author's opinion, along with that of 
other Biblical critics, upon the geological interpretation of the 
word Day, as used in the Narrative of Creation, which has a 
direct bearing upon the origin of the earth and its inhabitants. 
We shall then see that he yields, with others, all the latitude 
Theoretical Geology demands ; notwithstanding, he soon after 
says that — 

" We must bear in mind that Geology, one of the newest of 
sciences, has already many times changed its own theories of the 



THE MOSAIC NAEKATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 367 

order and method of the structure of our globe." And he goes on 
to say : "But that order which is now generally accepted by the 
most accomplished geologists — of whom Guyot, Dana, and Agas- 
siz may be taken as types — is substantially as follows," &c. But 
we know all about that. 

And now our Eev. Author shall entertain us with an exempli- 
fication of Laplace's doctrine of the evolution of the Solar Sys- 
tem. Thus — 

"A beautiful experiment has been invented to illustrate the 
possible formation of the world from a gaseous condition, accord- 
ing to the nebular theory. In a globe of water and alcohol, 
mixed in a nicely-proportioned density, is deposited a diminutive 
ball of oil, which, by its relative specific gravity, adjusts itself to 
the centre of the fluid mass. A certain motion imparted to this 
by a wire from without gives it the shape of our globe, flattened 
at the poles ; another motion will throw off the moon, or, if you 
please, the four moons of Jupiter ; again, Saturn and its rings may 
be produced by another rotary movement; and finally, the whole 
mass broken up into globules, representing the planetary system as 
it swims in space." 

The reader will doubtless be duly impressed with the force 
and sublimity of the parallel between the experiment and the 
supposed evolution from the Sun of our system of planets. It is, 
at least, an unequalled example of " the sublime to the ridicu- 
lous." But, as if in anticipation of the total worth lessness of a 
theory which he thus encourages, he goes on to say that — "As 
to the process, however, all is mere conjecture ; Genesis does not 
describe it, science can not unfold it." 

Here our Author supplies, in a Note, a statement of Laplace's 
"generally accepted" nebular hypothesis, from Prof. Loomis's 
Treatise on Astronomy. But, instead of repeating that state- 
ment here, I shall substitute for it, in the subjoined Note, Dr. 
Meissner's late experiment, by which he evolved, upon a small 
scale, our entire planetary system, with examples of all the in- 
habitants, living and extinct; while it exhibits, also, a summary 
view of the " New Philosophy " of the " Correlation of Yital and 
and Physical Forces " and of the Supreme Being. The reader 
will see that it is much more satisfactory than all the hypotheses 
that have yet appeared — the real quod erat demonstrandum. But, 



3G8 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

as Tacitus remarks, when speaking of the dress of Orators : 
" What I am going to say will appear, perhaps, to border on the 
ridiculous, and excite your mirth. With all my heart; I will 
hazard it for that very reason." I find the statement in a peri- 
odical. If simply a satire, it has a better foundation than the 
"nebular hypothesis," as that hypothesis would be its founda- 
tion. But read the " beautiful experiment."* 

* ' ' Dr. Meissner's startling assertion that he has, during the progress of his re- 
searches, succeeded in directly producing life in inanimate bodies, has been denied 
by no competent authority conversant with the facts in the case. [The usual argu- 
ment with Theoretical Geology.] It is somewhat singular that Mr. Crosse's produc- 
tion of the insect known to entomologists as the acarus Crossii, by means of electric- 
al currents of extremely low tension, should not have been followed up by scientific 
men more diligently than it has hitherto been ; but the general outcry which met the 
' Vestiges of Creation,' in which the explicit account of Mr. Crosse's experiments was 
first given to the world, may, in part, account for this apparent apathy. It is well 
known that Sir H. Davy thought that the Principle of Life was a gas, and it is now 
equally well known that the late lamented Professor Para day, Davy's friend and 
pupil, was, for several years before his death, in correspondence with Dr. Meissner, 
of Berlin, in regard to this subject, and had, as now appears, no small share in the 
honor of the discovery which has been generally claimed for Dr. Meissner. The Me- 
moir in which Dr. Meissner presented his views, and gave an account of his experi- 
ments before the Berlin Academy of Sciences, is & great and even touching paper. 
Great, because of its matter ; touching, because it is a histoiy of years of patient 
study and devotion to an idea. 

"His habit of patient thinking has resulted at last in the discovery of the Vital 
Principle, and the identification of it with motion. The generally received doctrine 
of the Correlation of Forces by which it has been shown that heat is but a mode of 
motion, £fnd that thinking is equally so, has, by Dr. Meissner, been farther illustrated 
by showing that all life and all the manifestations of life— will, love, the growth of 
plants and animals — nay, even that God Himself— are but motion. Dr. Meissner's 
God is the great anima mundi, but not simply the metaphysical anima, but the actual 
anima, which can at will be extracted from matter and produced in the laboratory. 
Motion, it will be seen from this, Dr. Meissner claims, is not simply change of place 
among bodies, but an actual, tangible substance.; and change of place is but the man- 
ifestations of its presence. Sir H. Davy, it will be remembered, claimed that the 
Life-principle was a gas, hut Meissner has obtained the gas, and, by means of a pow- 
erful apparatus, compressed it into a solid form, as was long ago done with carbonic 
acid gas. As shown by Dr. Meissner to the Academy, during the reading and 
explication of his Memoir, it was in a hollow glass globe about two feet in diameter, 
from which the atmospheric air had been, as far as possible, exhausted. Owing to 
the impossibility of completely withdrawing the air, its manifestations were to some 
extent impeded. It was in the form of a powder, which, when at rest, is white. But 
after sufficient air is withdrawn to enable it to assume its activity, the colors of it are 
those commonly seen in animal and vegetable life. The globe containing this powder 
was suspended from the wall by a fine silk cord, about five feet from the floor, so that 



THE MOSAIC NAKRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 369 

It will be seen that Dr. Meissner's demonstration shows the 
deficiency in analogy of the "beautiful experiment" just quoted 
from the work on Man in Genesis and in Geology, and that it no 
more illustrates Laplace's nebular hypothesis than a pumpkin 
can enlighten us as to a man's head and brains. But such is 
ever error in its conflict with Revelation ; which leads me to re- 
mark farther of that experiment that it reminds us of the paral- 
lel between man and the steam-engine, and Professor Faber's 
" speaking-machine," already mentioned at page 228. 

Our Author would reconcile us to the nebular hypothesis, the 
existing speculations of Theoretical Geology, Darwinism, &c. 

" Those," he says, " who hold to the Bible in its integrity as a 

it could readily be observed by tbe members of the Academy. Dr. Meissner, when 
he wished to call attention to it, removed a black silk cloth by which it was covered, 
and violently agitated the powder by shaking the globe with great force. When the 
powder had become chaotic in its forms he allowed the globe to hang quietly from 
the ceiling, and requested the audience to watch it closely, and see how the micro- 
cosm would reproduce, from the earliest times of the Universe, the various changes 
which the Microcosm has undergone. At first all was confusion, but soon the pow- 
der became brilliantly prismatic, and a tremendous motion pervaded the mass. A 
sudden scintillation of the exterior portions in proximity to the glass succeeded, and 
a flash of light shot from all these exterior portions towards the centre, represent- 
ing, as Dr. Meissner said, the cosmical light. At the centre, towards which the light 
had passed, was then seen, in rapid process of formation, an intensely bright crystal, 
the earliest form of organic life, which was soon to become the central sun of our 
planetary system. This crystal began to revolve slowly, and, as it was the only por- 
tion of the whole which had at all approached to a solid form, the particles of powder 
began to approach and unite themselves to it. In all directions the effect of attrac- 
tion was seen, and, like myriads of scintillating comets, the atoms rushed towards 
their sun, until all had united themselves to it. And now this sun revolved with 
ever-increasing rapidity, until, as the centrifugal force overcame the centripetal, the 
ball, in whirling, threw off ring after ring of matter, and, the rings breaking, rolled 
up into planets, revolving rhythmically around the central sun. Selecting the third 
planet from the miniature sun, which represented the earth, Dr. Meissner provided 
the President of the Academy with a powerful magnifying-glass, and requested him 
to examine the earth. It was in its azoic age. Not a trace of life could be seen on 
the barren rocks, none in the lonely seas breaking unimpeded on desolate shores. 
The palaeozoic age came on, and the eye could trace sea-weeds and the earliest veg- 
etation; and so the astonished President went through the mesozoic era and on- 
ward, as life increased. Vast vegetable forms, mighty ferns, tossing their giant 
arms in the gale, appeared. Uncouth monsters crept over the land and swam in the 
seas. Convulsions rent the earth's crust, and hurried millions of animated beings 
to death. Time passed, and men appeared, digging roots and ranging the forest. 
Cities arose, and history — the story of human woe — was represented on this mimic 
world." 

24 



370 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

revelation from God need not be disturbed by a scientific hy- 
pothesis of to-day that seems to contradict the letter of the Scrip- 
tures. Twenty years may show the hypothesis to be untenable, 
or modify the facts of which it was constructed." 

Such, also, was the language of the Kev. Dr. Chalmers, and 
of other Theologians who have embarked upon Speculative Ge- 
ology. 

" Those rocks," says Chalmers, " which stand forth in the 
order of their formation, and are each imprinted with their own 
peculiar fossil remains, have been termed the archives of Nature 
where she has recorded the changes that have taken place in the 
history of the globe. They are made to serve the purpose of 
scrolls or inscriptions, on which w T e might read of those great 
steps and successions by which the earth has been brought to its 
present state. And should these archives of nature be but truly 
deciphered, we are not afraid of their being openly confronted 
with the archives of Eevelation. It is unmanly to blink at the 
approach of light, from whatever quarter of observation it may 
fall upon us." 

Already, since Dr. Chalmers defended the natural length of 
the Mosaic Days, and admitted, for the special accommodation 
of Theoretical Geology, an antecedent creation and extinction of 
animals during the dark period of millions of ages that were as- 
sumed to have followed the "beginning," and before God said 
" Let there be light," the whole drama has changed, and the Six 
Creative Days have been prolonged into those ages that had 
been allowed to precede the second verse of the Narrative, and 
which were then held to be sufficient for a field of Speculation. 
For this new liberty with Eevelation the " ej^es of the Trilobite" 
are responsible. But we may well agree with Dr. Chalmers that, 
whatever may come up in the ways of Geology, it will ultimate- 
ly "only the more accredit that story which is graven on the 
Volume of Eevelation." 

It is a common pretext with those who attempt to reconcile 
the Narrative of Creation with the speculations of Theoretical 
Geology, that the progress of discovery will rectify any mistakes, 
and that the Narration will come out right in the end. Of this 
there can be little doubt; but what mischief, in the mean time, 
is desolating society? Who shall repair the evil, or stay its prog- 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 371 

ress among the masses that have been led astray ? Who limit 
its influence upon the popular faith in the Bible ? Why should 
we not "be disturbed" by hypotheses that have been progress- 
ively increasing in their conflict with the Narrative of Creation ? 
Do they yield any encouragement to "those who hold to the 
Bible in its integrity as a revelation from God ?" On the contra- 
ry, has it not been their tendency to remove from many of the 
best minds a principal obstacle in the way of Materialism and 
Atheism ? Why has there been, until a recent day, an almost 
universal concurrence in the literal meaning of the Narratives 
of Creation and the Flood, unless their statements are unmistak- 
ably plain, exact, and harmonious ? Or would that construction 
have been disturbed but for reasons of an extraneous nature? 

The Eev. Dr. Thompson, when speaking, in his work on Man 
in Genesis, &c, of the "pile-habitations" in the Lakes of Switz- 
erland, very appropriately cites " the famous maxim of Confu- 
cius, that — 'Knowledge consists in knowing what we know, 
and also in knowing what we do not know.' " Our Author 
remarks of himself — "I make no pretensions to being a man of 
science ; but as an interpreter of the Bible I am as much, be- 
holden to any fact in Science as the most accomplished Scien- 
tist." How, then, can he know the proper import of facts that 
are arrayed in opposition to the plain Narrative of Creation, es- 
pecially as he concedes that " the facts " upon the questions be- 
fore us are often giving rise to new theories ? Eminent ability 
to interpret the Bible is no qualification for a knowledge of 
those facts, but may be employed as a powerful restraint upon 
the encroachments of Theoretical Geology upon Revelation. 
And more than all, why should an interpreter of the Bible enter 
the arena of Theoretical Geology, Darwinism, &c, unless thor- 
oughly qualified by a knowledge of the various sciences to de- 
fend the Bible against all comers. Most clearly, infidelity will 
overrun the masses, and its long train of evils, in the existing 
state of Theoretical Geology, Darwinism, the Correlation of 
Vital, Creative, and Physical Forces, &c, unless the Minister of 
Religion sternly adheres to the unmistakable meaning of the 
Narrative of Creation. 

Nor may I shrink from the duty of referring to a still later 
popular discourse upon the foregoing subject by the Rev. Dr. 



372 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

McCosh, one of the eminent Authors of the " Typical Forms of 
Creation" and President of Princeton (N. J.) College. This lec- 
ture is very briefly reported in the JST. Y. Tribune of January 24, 
1871; from which the following extracts are derived. Thus — 

"THE DARWINIAN THEORY CONSISTENT WITH CHRISTIANITY. 

"Dr. McCosh, of Princeton College, delivered last evening, 
at Dr. Adams's Church, on Madison Avenue, the second of his 
course of ten popular lectures on ' Natural Theology and Apolo- 
getics.' ' In the last lecture,' said he, l we said that no natural 
power can produce organized matter out of unorganized matter. 
But is Eeligion bound up with a settlement of these scientific 
questions? Suppose there was proved to be such a thing as 
spontaneous generation, would Eeligion be overthrown ? I think 
not. There is really no ground for the fears of the timid on the 
one hand, nor the hopes of the arrogant on the other. Spontane- 
ous generation, presuming it to exist, must be a very complicated 
process. Supposing plants and animals to be formed from germs, 
how they are propagated is the next inquiry — by special act of 
creation or by development? And as it is now admitted that 
Christians may lawfully hold that the earth's strata were not 
created instantaneously, but by the action of fire and water, why 
may not the Christian he allowed to "believe in the theory of develop- 
ment, if sufficient evidence is produced ? Development is not so 
simple a process as some imagine." " The Darwinian theory is 
called the theory of natural selection, but it does not mean that 
the plant or animal has any power of selection." "As long, how- 
ever, as leading men of science oppose Darwin, his theory can not 
be said to be established. I am inclined to think that this theory 
contains much important truth, but not all the truth, and that it 
overlooks more than it perceives. On this subject Eeligion can 
say it traces all things up to God, whether He has acted by im- 
mediate fiat, or through secondary causes.' " (See Chapters VIL 
and YIII. Also, McCosh on the Typical Forms of Creation) 

Theoretical Geology has been at the foundation of all this mis- 
chief; and it would seem that just in proportion as the Minister 
of Eeligion has yielded to its interpretations of Scripture, so have 
the Materialists availed themselves of the opportunit} r , either to 



THE MOSAIC NAKKATIVES AND GEOLOGY. 373 

assail his faith in the existence of a Soul, or to baffle his labors in 
its behalf. 

Those of the Clergy who countenance the perversions of the 
Mosaic Narratives of Creation and the Flood may, for a while, 
attract the curious, however destitute of religious faith. But cu- 
riosity satisfied, or faith undermined, there will be "a beggarly 
account of empty " pews ; and as infidelity pervades the masses, 
the true pulpit interpreter of Eevelation will share in the neg- 
lect. 

Before entering upon a more critical examination of the Nar- 
ratives of Creation and the Mood, I shall turn our attention to 
the supposed evidences of a high antiquity of the human race, 
as tributary to the developmental and materialistic doctrines, as 
well as their bearing upon the Mosaic Eecords. 



374 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN ITS RELATION TO THE SOUL, AND 
THE SUPPOSED GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF REASON OUT OF 
THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS. 

The geological inference as to a prehistoric or pre- Adamite 
man, and the data upon which it is founded, have an important 
connection with the materialistic doctrine as to the Soul of man ; 
since it is the direct effect of that supposed high antiquity of the 
race, if not its direct object, to establish the hypothesis of the evo- 
lution of man out of the quadrumanous tribes, and its ablest ad- 
vocates are earnest propagators of the developmental doctrine. 
I shall, therefore, present the reader with all the principal facts 
upon which the hypothesis of a high antiquity is founded. 

This subject is alluded to in the following manner by Presi- 
dent Hooker, in his Address before the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science (1868) : 

"A New Science has dawned aipon us — that is, the Early His- 
tory of Mankind. Prehistoric Archaeology (including the origin of 
language and of art) is the latest to rise of a series of luminaries 
that have dispelled the mists of ages and replaced time-honored 
traditions by scientific truths." " It has told us that animal and 
vegetable life preceded the appearance of man on the globe, not 
by days, but by myriads of years" "And last of all, this new 
Science proclaims man himself to have inhabited this earth for 
perhaps many thousands of years before the historic period — a 
result little expected less than thirty years ago." " Prehistoric 
Archaeology now offers to lead us where man has hitherto not 
ventured to tread." 

Such pretensions of a "New Science," however deficient in in- 
terest may be its details, but which professes to be founded upon 
facts and principles that establish the existence of man "many 
thousands of years before the historic period," and which assigns 
his origin to a brutal race, must become the subject of our crit- 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 375 

ical examination, that no intrenchment of the nature of a " Sci- 
ence" may serve as a retreat for Materialism and Darwinism. 
Societies of eminent men are formed for the advancement of this 
"New Science," and the pens of individuals are laboriously em- 
ployed in magnifying its importance. 

Geologists differ in their estimates of the period when the first 
rudiments of the human Mind began to emerge from the Instinct 
of animals. Some have assigned the earliest date to 80,000 years 
B.C. ; others to 160,000 ; and others to 224,000 years. But in the 
presence of all this, and of the facts upon which it rests, it has 
been lately affirmed by Dr. Pfaff, in his work on the Prehistoric 
Earth (1868), that there is nothing to show that man has ex- 
isted upon the earth beyond the Biblical period of 7000 years.* 

The Eev. Dr. Thompson, however, in his work on Man in 
Genesis and in Geology (1870), supposes that — 

" There is no room to question the general result of the re- 
searches among the river-caves and the diluvial drift ; the find- 
ings are too numerous and well attested, and the archaeological 
and geological conditions too well ascertained, to admit a doubt 
that Man existed in Europe contemporaneously with the cave- 
bear, and at least upon the margin of the glacial age. What, then, 
shall ive make of these facts in vieiu of the Biblical account of the Oe- 
igin of Man F" 

And yet our Eev. Author soon afterwards gives us the follow- 
ing information. Which of the statements should we prefer — 
the foregoing or the following? Thus — 

"After a careful statement of the discoveries bearing upon the 
Antiquity of Man, Dr. Pfaff infers that Man did not appear till 
after the ice period. He declares the uncertainty of all geological 
calculations intended to fix the period of Man's origin, and refutes 
Lyell's arbitrary estimates from the present rate of formation in drift 
and deltas. He finds no traces of Man, with any certainty, farther 
back than the great climatic changes of the Quaternary period, 
1 the most reliable of which do not reach back more than 5000 
to 7000 years from the present time.' " 

* The calculation of Dr. William Hales, in his Analysis of Ancient Chronology, 
will doubtless supersede that of Archbishop Usher, so long accepted. According to 
the former, our present year (1870) is the 7281st since the Creation, and the 5025th 
from the Flood. 



376 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

When Theoretical Geology speaks of a "low antiquity of 
man," it has no reference to the Biblical account, but to the rela- 
tion which his vestiges are supposed to bear, in the calendar of 
time, to those of the vegetable and animal tribes that are en- 
tombed in the rocks. Sir Charles Lyell supplies, in his 
Principles of Geology, the following example of the usage of Ge- 
ology in estimating the period of man's existence upon earth : 

"I need not dwell," he says, "on the proofs of the low antiq- 
uity of our species, for it is not controverted by any experienced Ge- 
ologist. Indeed, the real difficulty consists in tracing back the 
signs of man's existence on the earth to that comparatively mod- 
ern period when species now his contemporaries began to pre- 
dominate. It is never pretended that our species coexisted with the 
assemblages of animals and plants, of which all, or even a great 
part, of the species are extinct." 

The work by Sir Charles on the Antiquity of Man (1863) 
covers the whole ground relative to this subject, and as the 
reader will be interested with the principal facts in a narrow 
compass, I shall now present all those which have any direct 
bearing upon the question of the existence of a prehistoric or 
pre- Adamite Man. Those writers whose works have appeared 
more recently have added nothing to the proof embraced in the 
work before us, and, indeed, are greatly deficient in the details 
which are supplied by Sir Charles Lyell. Such, for example, is 
true of the latest, by Louis Figuier, on Prehistoric Man. 

As much will be said in the present chapter of certain vestiges 
that are supposed to denote the progress of the human Mind at 
the early periods of our race, it may be well to explain that 
those relics consist of stone, bronze, and iron implements, and that 
each is designated as marking an Age of progress, and are known 
as the " Stone Age," &.c. ; in that respect corresponding with 
the method observed in indicating the progress of development 
among the animal tribes, from the lowest to the highest, by cer- 
tain Dynasties — as the " Eeign of Insects," the "Keign of Sauri- 
ans," the " Eeign of Serpents," the " Keign of the Mastodon," &c. 
To the foregoing Ages of Man Figuier adds an " Age of Cop- 
per" for the North American Indian; but no one has yet 
thought of an Age of Silver and Gold for the Mexican and Pe- 
ruvian Indians. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 377 

Theoretical Geology has greatly moderated its views as to the 
high antiquity of the Pile-habitations, and the Stone Age, (the 
oldest of all,) in Switzerland. Sir Charles, on estimating the 
" rate of the conversion of water into marshy land " at a certain 
locality on the Lake of Bienne, supposes that it would require 
for the aquatic dwelling at Pont de Thiele a period of 6750 
years B.C. But this is not a little qualified by his statement 
that — " The earliest historical account of such habitations is that 
given by Herodotus of a Thracian Tribe, who divelt in the year 
520 B.C. in Prasias, a small mountain-lake of modern Eoumelia." 

And as to the 'Ages," Sir Charles considers M. Morlot's opin- 
ion good for " assigning to the Bronze Age (in Switzerland) a 
date of between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest stone 
period an age of 5000 to 7000 years." 

Nevertheless, there are other vestiges of a similar nature to 
those in Switzerland, and others of greater significance, that lead 
Sir Charles to the conclusion that man is of a far higher antiq- 
uity. These are embraced in the following quotations : 

" The Age of Stone in Denmark coincides with the period of 
the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part at least 
with the second vegetation, or that of the oak. But a considera- 
ble portion of the oak epoch coincided with the Age of Bronze, 
for swords and shields of that metal have been taken out of the 
peat in which oaks abound. The Age of Iron corresponded 
more nearly with that of the beech-tree." " Hatchets, however, 
of copper have been found in the Danish peat." 

One can not fail here of remarking that it would have been 
more instructive if Sir Charles had given us some other clue to 
the periods of the fir, the oak, and the beech, than the contempo- 
raneous implements whose ages are referred to those of the trees. 

In a cavern at Brixham, England, was found, "in close prox- 
imity to a very perfect flint tool, the entire left hind leg of a cave 
bear," and also the humerus of a cave-bear in another part of the 
cave, along with the bones of other animals — those of the cave- 
bear, an extinct species, being the point of interest. From which 
small circumstance Sir Charles concludes that — 

" If they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear, from this 
case, that the bear had lived after the flint tools were manufac- 
tured ; or, in other words, that man in this district preceded the 



378 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

cave-bear." Again, another similar instance — " M. Graudoy 
caused a deep excavation to be made, and found nine hatchets, 
most distinctly in situ in the diluvium, associated with the teeth 
of the Equus fossilis, and a species of Bos, different from any now 
living." It is added that, " Mr. Frere had, so long ago as 1797, 
found flint weapons of the same type as those of Amiens, in a 
fresh-water formation in Suffolk, in conjunction with elephant 
remains ; and nearly a hundred years earlier (1715) another tool 
of the same kind had been exhumed from the gravel of London, 
together with bones of an elephant." 

In immediate connection with the foregoing, apparently sup- 
posing that his facts may not be very convincing, he brings to 
their aid the following apothegm, intended for the advancement 
of "modern science:" 

" I may conclude this chapter," he says, " by quoting a saying 
of Professor Agassiz — that ' Whenever a new and startling fact 
is brought to light in science, people first say, " It is not true," 
then that "It is contrary to Religion," and lastly, " That every 
body knew it before." ' " 

I shall here stop for the purpose of saying, what will be equal- 
ly applicable to the subsequent statements, that it can not be 
doubted that most of the phenomena are clearly referable to 
the agency of currents of water, by which the implements and 
bones had been transported from different localities and depos- 
ited together along with the gravel and alluvium. And all this 
may have occurred long after the general deluge, or within five 
hundred or a thousand years before that event. Or, in some of 
the cases the bones may have been accumulated and buried by 
the Flood, along with the implements in places where they were 
manufactured ; while in other cases that catastrophe may have 
left the bones upon the surface, and subsequent torrents of water 
have conveyed them to their places of final rest. (See Appendi- 
ces II. and III.) Cities renowned in history have been entombed, 
and their localities lost to tradition, or ascertained only after la- 
borious explorations — as witness Nineveh and Babylon ; and 
even the very topography of Jerusalem is scarcely a guide to its 
buried ruins. Caves are visited and dug over, and their contents 
confounded together, as well by living, as they have been by ex- 
tinct animals. And who shall say that the human remains were 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 379 

not more probably carried there by the former than by the lat- 
ter, or that man may not have sometimes contributed to the co- 
incidence by making the caves his shelter or a burial-place? 
And as to the relics of the Lakes, they are on common ground 
with a multitude of other facts that have been misapprehended 
by seekers after the marvellous, or to sustain some preconceived 
hypothesis, or perverted with a view to notoriety or the propa- 
gation of infidelity. The mounds, fortifications, &c, over an 
extensive region of North America, which were reared by a 
large nation that had abandoned the country before the arrival 
of Europeans, are far greater, because unquestionable, memorials. 
And yet their preservation and other circumstances denote a 
period much short of received antiquity. I will add, also, that 
scarcely had the supposed relics of a pre- Adamite race on the 
Swiss Lakes been brought within a modern period, than the 
chalk-flint implements — hatchets, knives, arrow-heads, &c. — found 
imbedded in certain gravel-drifts of France were associated with 
the remote geological era of that formation ; and this more es- 
pecially as they occurred in connection with the remains of ex- 
tinct mammalia. But the question of their high antiquity was 
subjected to a very logical criticism in Blackwood's Magazine 
(October, I860), and conclusively settled in favor of the Mosaic 
Genealogy, and Theoretical Geology completely routed from its 
intrenchment. 

Indeed, after all, Sir Charles appears to be much of our opin- 
ion ; for he says — "If we suppose that the greater number of the 
flint implements occurring in the neighborhood of Abbeville and 
Amiens were brought by river-action into their present position, 
we can at once explain why so large a proportion of them are 
found at considerable depths from the surface, for they would 
naturally be buried in gravel, and not in fine sediment." 

The very depth at which the implements are found, along with 
the gravel, can leave no doubt of their transportation by water. 
Our Author has also the following very significant statement : 

"It is naturally a matter of no small surprise that, after we 
have collected many hundred flint implements, including knives, 
many thousands, not a single human hone has yet been met with 
in the alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme. This dearth of 
the mortal remains of our species holds true equally, as yet, in all 



380 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

other parts of Europe where the tool-hearing drift of the post-plio- 
cene period has been investigated in valley deposits. Yet in 
these same formations there is no want of hones of mammalia belong- 
ing to extinct and living species." Our Author, however, is not 
without hope, for he continues — " That ere long, now that curios- 
ity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains 
will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I con- 
fidently expect." But who shall determine the age of that allu- 
vium ? Must it be left to the animal exuviae ? Then who shall 
say when species became extinct? Our Author has the follow- 
ing most unpromising comment upon the foregoing failure of in- 
dispensable facts — the human bones for which he was waiting. 
He says, in immediate connection, that — 

"In the mean time, the absence of all vestige of human bones 
which belonged to that population by which so many weapons 
were designed and executed, affords a most striking and instruct- 
ive lesson in regard to the value of negative evidence when ad- 
duced in proof of the non-existence of certain classes of terrestrial 
animals at given periods of the past. It is a new and emphatic 
illustration of the extreme imperfection of the Geological record, of 
which even they who are constantly working in the field can not 
form a just conception." 

Notwithstanding, however, all this, I shall go on with our Au- 
thor's evidences of the slow development of the human Mind, 
since the direct effect of the doctrine is to provide an argument 
for the hypothesis of evolution, and to discourage a belief in the 
existence of the Soul, and that the reader may have before him 
the only proof of any moment that has been offered in behalf of 
this chimerical pursuit. 

The celebrated formation of St. Acheul, near the Somme, sup- 
plies our Author with one of his most important evidences of 
the high antiquity of man, to which there will be a subsequent 
reference in connection with the Natchez and New Orleans fossil 
human bones, as indicating the probable time of their entomb- 
ment. " The terrace of St. Acheul may be described," says our 
Author, "as a gently sloping ledge of chalk, covered with grav- 
el, topped, as usual, with loam and fine sediment, the surface of 
the loam being one hundred feet above the Somme. Many stone 
coffins of the Gallo-Koman period have been dug out of the 



ANTIQUITY OE MAN, ETC. 381 

upper portion of this alluvial mass," But the important facts are 
the following: "A fragment of an elephant's tooth was dug out 
of unstratified sandy loam at eleven feet from the surface ; and at 
seventeen feet from the surface a large and nearly entire unrolled 
molar tooth of the same species was obtained, belonging to the 
Elephas primigenius. A stone hatchet was discovered at the 
same time about one foot lower down, in densely compressed 
gravel." These are the facts, accompanied by observations upon 
the formation of the valley of the Somme. 

The valleys of the Seine supply only scanty and unreliable 
facts as to man — "In the ancient alluvium of its valleys and its 
principal tributaries," says our Author, " the same assemblage of 
fossil animals which have been alluded to as characterizing the 
gravel of Picardy has been long known." But — " The French 
geologists have made as yet too little progress in identifying the 
age of the successive deposits of ancient alluvium in various parts 
of the basin of the Seine, to enable us to speculate with confi- 
dence as to the coincidence in date of the granitic gravel with 
human bones of the Grotte d'Arcy and the stone hatchets buried 
in the gray diluvium of La Motte Piquet, before mentioned." "In 
attempting to settle the chronology of fluviatile deposits, it is al- 
most equally difficult to avail ourselves of the evidence of organic re- 
mains and the superposition of the strata, for we may find two old 
river-beds on the same level in juxtaposition, one of them per- 
haps many thousands of years posterior to the other." 

In the Valley of the Oise — "A flint hatchet, of the old Abbe- 
ville and Amiens type, was lately found near Criel, on the Oise, 
in gravel." "In a higher part of the same valley, near Chauny, 
a great many fossil bones have been collected." They were 
of two species of extinct elephants, the musk buffalo, and other 
mammalia. 

As to the basin of the Thames — " Many bones of the elephant, 
rhinoceros, and hippopotamus have been found in the gravel on 
which London stands." And — "More than a dozen flint weap- 
ons of the Amiens type have already been found in the basin of 
the Thames ; but the geological position of no one of them has yet 
been ascertained with the same accuracy as that of many of the 
tools dug up in the valley of the Somme, or some other British 
examples which will presently be mentioned." These examples 



382 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

consist of " two well-finished [flint] implements in the gravel- 
pits of Biddenham, thirteen feet from the surface of the soil," 
where were also found bones of an elephant. In the gravel of 
Bedford, two miles distant, the remains of another species of ele- 
phant, and of a hippopotamus, also occurred. "But," says our 
Author, " we have scarcely as yet sufficient data to enable us to 
determine the relative age of these strata." He concludes, how- 
ever, from the "two implements," that "the country was inhab- 
ited by the primitive people who fashioned the flint tools," and 
that they were "coeval with the extinct mammalia." Numerous 
flint spear-heads have been discovered at Hoxne, in Suffolk, un- 
der clay of the depth of seven or eight feet, and, on account of 
the number, it is thought "probable that there may have been a 
manufactory of weapons on the spot." At Icklingham "two 
flints of a lance-head form have been found in a bed of gravel at 
the depth of four feet from the surface." The conclusion is that 
"the tool-bearing gravel here is proved to be newer than the 
glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks de- 
rived from that formation." In a cavern in Somersetshire, sup- 
posed to have been an ancient hyena's den, have been found the 
bones of several extinct species of mammalia. " Intermixed with 
the above fossil bones were some arrow-heads, made of bone, and 
many chipped flints, and chipped pieces of chert, which were 
taken out of the undisturbed matrix, together with a hyena's 
tooth, showing that man had either been contemporary with or 
preceded the extinct fauna." 

In South Wales, " in a newly discovered cave, there have been 
found the remains of two species of rhinoceros [extinct] in an 
undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well- 
shaped flint-knives, evidently of human workmanship. It is clear, 
from their position, that man was coeval with these two species." 

In the bottom of a cave in the north of Sicily there is "a 
bone deposit, and above it other materials reaching to the roof, 
and evidently washed in from above. In this upper breccia Dr. 
Falconer discovered flint-knives, bone splinters, bits of charcoal, 
burnt clay, and other objects indicating human intervention, 
mingled with teeth of horses and other bones." Dr. Falconer 
supposed "that the various articles were carried into the cave 
by the tranquil agency of water." 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 383 

At what is supposed to have been "a sepulchral vault of the 
post-pliocene period, near Auvignac, in the south of France" — 
"Dr. Amiel, the 'Mayor, ordered all the bones to be taken out 
and reinterred in the parish cemetery. He ascertained, by count- 
ing the homologous bones, that they must have formed parts of 
no less than seventeen skeletons of both sexes and all ages. He 
also remarked that the size of the adults was such as to imply a 
race of small stature. Unfortunately, the skulls were injured in 
the transfer; and, what is worse, after the lapse of eight years, 
when M. Lartet visited Auvignac, the village sexton was unable 
to tell him in what exact place the trench was dug where the 
skeletons were thrown, so that this rich harvest of ethnological 
knowledge seems forever lost to the antiquary and geologist." ! ! 
Subsequently, outside and close to the entrance of the vault, M. 
Lartet " found a layer of ashes and charcoal about seven inches 
thick, extending over an area of six or seven square yards. 
Among the cinders were fragments of fossil sandstone reddened 
by heat." "Among the ashes, and in some overlying earthy 
layers, were a great variety of bones and implements ; among 
the latter not fewer than a hundred flint articles — knives, pro- 
jectiles, sling-stones, and chips." " Scattered through the same 
ashes and earth were the bones of various species of animals." 
They consisted of nine species of carnivorous, and ten of herbiv- 
orous, some of them extinct. Among them was the Elephas pri- 
migenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and the Ursus spelceus. " The 
bones of the herbivora which had contained marrow were invari- 
ably split open, as if for its extraction, many of them being also 
burnt. The spongy parts, moreover, had been eaten and gnawed 
after they were broken — the work, according to M. Lartet, of hy- 
enas, who were supposed to have prowled about the spot and fed 
on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after the retreat 
of the human visitors." 

Such are the material facts of this interesting recital ; and, al- 
though it is as strong as any of our Author's evidences, he re- 
marks that — "If we accept M. Lartet's interpretation of the ossif- 
erous deposits of Auvignac, both inside and outside the grotto (or 
cave), they add nothing to the palceontological evidence in favor of 
man's antiquity ; for we have seen the same mammalia associated 
elsewhere with the implements; and species, such as an extinct 



384: PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

elephant and hippopotamus, missing here, have been met with in 
other places. An argument, however, having an opposite hearing 
may, perhaps, be founded on the phenomena at Auvignac. It 
may, indeed it has been said, that they imply that some of the 
extinct mammalia survived nearly to our oivn times. First, because 
of the modem style of the works of art at Auvignac ; secondly, 
because of the absence of any signs of change in the physical ge- 
ography of the country since the cave was used for a place of 
sepulture." 

Our Author now comes to the celebrated fossil man of Denise, 
found in a volcanic breccia in central France. But this is sur- 
rounded by so many doubts and obscurities, and withal, "some 
geologists," says our Author, " have been disinclined to believe 
in its genuineness" that an adherence to it in behalf of pre- Adam- 
ite man only evinces the poverty of geological facts. 

Our Author takes up next the human fossil pelvic bone of 
Natchez, on the Mississippi, which, "accompanied by the bones 
of the mastodon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed 
out of a more ancient alluvial deposit." This locality was visited 
by Sir Charles, and the question of the high antiquity of the 
bone may be dismissed with our Author's statement that — "In 
my ' Second Yisit to America,' in 1846, 1 suggested, as a possible 
explanation of this association of a human bone with the remains 
of a mastodon and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have 
been derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas 
the remains of the extinct mammalia were dislodged from a low- 
er position, and both may have fallen into the same heap at the bot- 
tom of the ravine. On suggesting this hypothesis to Col. Wiley, 
of Natchez, I found that the same idea had already occurred to his 
mind." Finally, "It is allowable to suspend our judgment as to 
the high antiquity of the fossil." But our Author is not disposed 
to allow the failure of any discoveries which have been offered as 
evidences of a pre- Adamite man to affect the validity of other al- 
leged proof that is equally questionable. As in the case of the 
"ossiferous deposits of Auvignac," he remarks that — "Should 
future researches confirm the opinion that the Natchez man co- 
existed with the mastodon, it would not enhance the value of the 
geological evidence in favor of man's antiquity." 

About the year 1850, a fossil human skeleton was discovered 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 385 

in the Mississippi delta near New Orleans, which has been a great 
trophy for " the science." It was found " at the depth of sixteen 
feet from the surface, beneath four buried forests superimposed 
upon each other." From some special calculations a distin- 
guished geologist quickly referred the catastrophe which buried 
the individual to the year 160,000 before the reputed creation of 
Adam. Dr. Dowler, however, the discoverer, estimated the pe- 
riod at fifty thousand years. But it will probably be concluded, 
from the want of other evidences of the existence of man on this 
continent for two thousand years, as well as from other facts, 
that the man, who had the characteristic skull of the red Indian, 
and therefore later than the tribes who have left their vestiges of 
mounds and tumuli, was imbedded within a comparatively re- 
cent date by flood- wood brought down by the freshets of the 
Mississippi Eiver. 

Sir Charles alludes to the foregoing New Orleans fossil man 
in connection with the Natchez specimen, and dismisses it in the 
following manner: " In that case no remains [animal] were found 
associated with those of man." At an. early part of his work he 
had referred to this fossil, remarking that — "As the discovery 
had not been made when I saw the excavation in progress in 
1846, I can not form an opinion as to the value of the chrono- 
logical calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe to this 
skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years." 

In connection with the foregoing our Author has an estimate 
of the time during which the delta of the Mississippi was in 
progress of formation, in which, near New Orleans, the fossil 
skeleton was found, and remarks that — " The lowest estimate 
of the time required would lead us to assign a high antiquity, 
amounting to many tens of thousands of years, probably more 
than 100,000, to the existing delta." 

We may now "form an opinion as to the value of the chrono- 
logical calculations" which have led our Author to ascribe to 
the formation of the delta a period of 100,000 years, and also of 
many othes things in Theoretical Geology, by comparing the es- 
timate with another statement in his Principles of Geology rela- 
tive to a region in near proximity with the delta of the Missis- 
sippi. Thus our Author: 

"So late as the year 1812, the whole valley, from the mouth 

25 



386 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of the Ohio to that of the St. Francis, including a tract of 300 
miles in length, and exceeding in area the whole basin of the 
Thames, was convulsed to such a degree as to create new islands 
in the river, and lakes in the alluvial plain, some of which are 
twenty miles in extent." But this is only an example of the 
effects of earthquakes in substituting geological problems for 
others of a very different import. "It is scarcely necessary," 
says Sir Charles, " to observe that the inequalities produced even 
by one shock might render the study of the alluvial plain of the 
Mississippi, at some future period, most perplexing to a geologist 
who should reason on the distribution of transported materials with- 
out being aware that the configuration of the country had varied 
materially during the time when the excavating or removing 
power of the river was greatest." 

It should be said, also, that the calculations made by Sir 
Charles as to the time occupied in the formation of deltas, and 
other similar deposits, have been the subject of critical examina- 
tion, and shown to be erroneous, and that the formations are of 
no very remote period. 

Eeturning to our Author's work on the "Antiquity of Man," 
we have arrived at his opinion of the era of him who made the 
hatchet that was found in the terrace of St. Acheul (page 380). 
"If," says Sir Charles, "I was right in calculating that the pres- 
ent delta of the Mississippi has required, as a minimum of time, 
more than 100,000 years for its growth, it would follow, if the 
claims of the Natchez man to have coexisted with the mastodon 
are admitted, that North America was peopled more than 100,000 
years ago by the human race. But even were that true, we could 
not presume, reasoning from ascertained geological data, that the 
Natchez bone was anterior in date to the antique hatchet of St. 
Acheul." 

Next follows an account of the " Forest Bed " in the Norfolk 
Cliffs, in the vicinity of Cromer, which will throw some light 
upon the supposed high antiquity of the foregoing deposits. At 
this "bed" occurs a buried forest, between the stumps of which 
and the lignite above them are found no less than eleven species 
of well-known living plants — namely, the Scotch fir, spruce fir, yew, 
common sloe, buck bean, white ivater-lily, hornwort, yellow water- 
lily, pond-weed, alder, and oak. There are also imbedded the 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 387 

exuvise of several species of living insects and fresh-water shells. 
In the midst have been found, also, the bones of several extinct 
mammalia. 

This is a hard case for Theoretical Geology — its extinctions, 
progressive developments, &c. — and thoroughly disproves the 
conclusions that have been derived from the association in 
gravel drift and alluvium of fossil human bones and flint imple- 
ments with the bones of extinct elephants, &c. It was, however, 
too important a case to have been neglected by our Author, and 
not to have exacted from him a candid admission of its crushing 
import. He apostrophizes thus over its unwelcome tidings — 

"When we consider the familiar aspect of the flora , the accom- 
panying mammalia are certainly MOST extraordinary. There 
are no less than two Elephants, a Khinoceros, and Hippopotamus 
[all extinct], a large extinct Beaver, and several large estuarian 
and marine Mammalia, such as the Walrus, the Narwhal, and the 
Whale" — phenomena that are readily and only explained by the 
Nbachian Flood and subsequent currents of water. (See Appen- 
dix III.) Our Author, however, enters into speculations about 
glacial drift as tributary to the formation of the cliff, and con- 
cludes the chapter with the remark that — 

" We need not despair of one day meeting with the signs of 
man's existence in the forest bed, or in the overlying strata, on 
the ground of any incongeniality of the climate, or incongruity in 
the state of the animate creation with the well-being of our 
species." 

But should such a discovery be made, what would it prove in 
connection with the coincidence of the exuviae of the extinct ani- 
mals with those of so many living plants? Which of them 
should claim a contemporary existence with the human remains? 
In the event of the discovery Sir Charles determines that the age 
of man would be fixed at an era before the glacial period. But 
he must take along the coincidence of the extinct mammalia and 
the living plants — the "glacial theory "to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 

At a subsequent stage of our Author's work he introduces 
an assemblage similar to the foregoing, and of the same bearing 
upon Theoretical Geology. This occurs at Durnten, on the border 
of the Lake of Zurich, where there is a bed of lignite, from five 



388 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

to twelve feet thick, which had been worked for fuel, during 
which operation many organic remains came to light. Among 
them "are the teeth of an Elephas antiguus, a rhinoceros, the wild 
hull, and red deer. In the same beds I found many fresh-water 
shells, all of living species. The plants are also recent [of living 
species], and agree singularly with those of the Cromer buried for- 
est at Norfolk Cliffs (page 386). Overlying the lignite are, first, 
stratified gravel, about thirty feet thick ; and, secondly, highest of 
all, huge angidar erratic blocks." These blocks were not rolled, 
but wafted by such a debacle ak the General Deluge. (See Ap- 
pendices II. and III.) 

At Mercurago, in the north of Italy, in the peat which has 
filled up one of the lakes, there have been discovered "piles of a 
lake-dwelling like those of Switzerland (page 377), together with 
various utensils, and a canoe hollowed out of the trunk of a tree. 
From this fact we learn that south of the Alps, as well as at .the 
north of them, a primitive people, having similar habits, flourished 
after the retreat of the great glaciers." 

Near Maestricht, on the Meuse, "a section of a canal occurs at 
the village of Smeermass, about sixty feet deep, the lower forty 
feet consisting of stratified gravel, and the upper, of twenty feet, 
of loess [a loamy deposit]. The number of molars, tusks, and 
bones of elephants obtained during these diggings was extraor- 
dinary, and the bones of other mammalia, and a human jaw with 
teeth. The jaw was found at the depth of nineteen feet from 
the surface. But the jaw was isolated, the nearest tusk of the 
elephant being six yards removed from it in horizontal dis- 
tance." 

Our Author has an extended disquisition upon the effects of 
ice during the supposed glacial period, upon erratics or bowlders, 
successive changes in physical geography, such as the subsidence 
and elevation of beds, the origin of lake basins, &c, but it has no 
intelligible relation to the history of man. 

As to the "glacial period in Europe," our Author observes 
that the enduring marks which the glaciers have left "enlarge 
our conceptions of the antiquity, not only of the living species 
of animals and plants, but of their present geographical distribu- 
tion, and throw light on the chronological relations of these spe- 
cies to the earliest date yet ascertained for the existence of the 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 389 

human race. That date, it will be seen, is very remote if com- 
pared to the times of history and tradition." 

Our Author, in his Recapitulation, remarks that — "Between 
the newer or recent division of the Stone Period and the older 
division, which has been called the Post-pliocene, there was evi- 
dently a vast interval of time — A GAP in the history of the past 
into which many monuments of intermediate date must he interca- 
lated: 1 

This is at once superseded by the consideration that the unciv- 
ilized people who occupied the countries which we have now 
gone over were abruptly succeeded by a race of high cultiva- 
tion; and therefore we may not expect to find monumental 
traces intermediate in civilization between those who made the 
flint implements and the pile habitations and those successors 
whose descendants have built up London, Paris, &c. We have 
a case parallel to that in North America, where the earliest and 
a vast population have left no vestige but mounds of earth, rude 
specimens of earthenware, and their own bones ; and these suc- 
ceeded by our present Indians of the " Stone Age." 

There is, also, a probable parallel between the American con- 
tinent and the British Isles in relation to the means of commu- 
nication with other parts of the globe. The existence of huge 
mammalia upon the island of Great Britain that have long since 
disappeared, and of some living animals, renders it certain that 
this insular spot was once connected with the Continent at a pe- 
riod subsequent to the Noachian Flood. It is highly probable, 
however, that some of the extinct mammalia inhabited the island 
at a prior era; or, as in many other parts of the earth, the bones, 
in more or less of the instances, were deposited there by that 
catastrophe, particularly the "erratic blocks" at Durnten, on the 
Lake of Zurich (page 387, and Appendix III.). In either case, 
currents of water have accumulated the bones, flint implements, 
&c. It is not doubtful, also, that North America was once united 
with Asia at Behring's Straits; and it is highly probable that 
similar means of intercommunication existed between Southern 
Asia and America. The early ages of the earth were attended 
by great convulsions, and by other causes of violent operation ; 
while renewed convulsions distinguished the era of the Flood, 
and not improbably, within no long period afterwards, others led 



390 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

to the dismemberment of South America and Asia, and of the 
British Isles from continental Europe. (See Appendix II.) 

I have now stated all the facts, as related in our Author's 
work on the Antiquity of Man, that have any direct bearing 
upon that question, that the reader may see how entirely these 
supposed evidences have failed of rendering even probable the 
existence of man for more than a very few thousand years. Nev- 
ertheless, I agree entirely with Sir Charles (but for other reasons 
than assigned by him), that — 

"It is clear that Man was contemporary in Europe with two 
species of elephant, two of rhinoceros, at least one of hippopot- 
amus, the cave-bear, cave-lion, and cave-hyena, various bovine, 
and equine animals now extinct, and many smaller carnivora, 
rodentia, and insectivora." 

Such were the violent agencies in the early period of the Mo- 
saic Earth (see Appendix L), that the extinction of numerous spe- 
cies of animals, especially the inferior aquatic, would be in the 
highest degree probable ; while, also, the general Deluge contrib- 
utes largely in explaining the occurrence of superficial fossils in 
all parts of the globe, as well as the extinction of many species of 
land animals at an early period after that catastrophe. The few 
that were then existing, and the destructive causes that were con- 
sequent upon such an event, such as an inadequate means of sus- 
tenance, &c, readily explain the difference in the numerical ratio 
between the disappearance of species at that early era and the 
present day ; and the difference contributes to the proof of such 
a catastrophe. 

Since the publication of our Author's Antiquity of Man, a few 
discoveries have been made similar to those now related, partic- 
ularly in the Department de la Dordogne, France, where have 
been found some anomalous bones that " belonged to a gigantic 
race whose limbs resembled those of the gorilla." But they re- 
flect no light upon the subject before us, excepting that the vo- 
luminous capacity of the skulls destroys the supposed consanguin- 
ity of the gorilla to the human race. To. these may be added the 
late discovery of the Los Angelos human skull, which not im- 
probably found its way to the bottom of the shaft much after the 
manner in which Lyell surmises that the fossil bones at Natchez 
got into the ravine below the cliff (p. 384). There also occurs in 



ANTIQUITY OE MAN, ETC. 391 

the Eecords of the Geological Survey of India, for the year 1868, 
a description, by Dr. Oldham, of an agate flake, of human manu- 
facture, which was found in a deposit supposed to be of the Plio- 
cene Age. Of the latest, or " New Pliocene," Lyell remarks, in 
his Principles of Geology, that "the antiquity of the Newer 
Pliocene strata of Sicily must be very great, embracing, perhaps, 
myriads of years" I should state, also, that I have failed of con- 
sulting the work of J. Scott Moore, who is said to have an- 
nounced a second edition of his Pre-glacial Man and Geological 
Chronology for three millions of years before A.D. 1800, with 
addenda and diagrams of the earth's orbit for four millions of 
years. ' 

There has also recently appeared a work by Dr. E. T. Hamy, 
u De Paleontologie Humaine" (1870), which professes to be a sup- 
plement to Ly ell's Antiquity of Man; but it consists of a brief re- 
capitulation of some of the facts known to Sir Charles, illus- 
trated by numerous figures of stone implements, bones, &c. — 
forming a popular treatise. It has nothing that advances the 
hypothesis of the antiquity of man, unless it be the discovery of 
the humerus, ribs, and vertebrae of an extinct Halitherium in the 
"Miocene" deposit at Pouance (Maine-et-Loire), as described by 
M. l'Abbe Delaunay (1867), and the supposed connection of 
which with the existence of man depends mainly upon some 
equivocal indentations upon the bones. It is considered doubt- 
ful, however, by some whether the fractures were made by man. 
To the same period M. Bourgeois refers an engraved flint found 
at Thenay (1867), and it is conjectured that certain indented 
bones found by Garrigon and Filhol at Sansan (1868) " demon- 
tree la cotemporaneite de Thomme et des mammiferes miocenes." But 
Dr. Hamy ascribes very little importance to these supposed testi- 
monials; and remarks that no human bones have been discov- 
ered as low down as the so-called "Miocene" deposits ; and that 
the fragments of bones found at Savone are the only supposed 
testimonials of the existence of man at the "Pliocene" period 
(or next above the "Miocene"), and that their value is ques- 
tioned. 

As to the rude implements of savage life which are supposed 
to supply a strong proof of the high antiquity of man, many of 
the ablest authorities in geological research may be brought to 



392 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

show that no reliance can be placed upon them. Pfaff has been 
already mentioned. And here is another late writer of vast ex- 
perience, Sven Nilsson, who, in his work on the " Primitive In- 
habitants of Scandinavia during the Stone Age" (third ed., 1868), 
after a critical description of the various stone implements dis- 
covered in Scandinavia, observes, that — 

"A remarkable fact in this branch of ethnography is the great 
resemblance that exists among the stone implements of nations of 
different tribes daring very different periods, and in the most distant 
countries of the earth.'''' He compares the sepulchral monuments 
of Scandinavia, during the Stone Age, with the dwelling-houses 
of the Esquimaux — "In Greenland and in North America," he 
says, "we find in the winter huts of the Esquimaux a most sur- 
prising similarity to our Scandinavian tumuli of the Stone Age." 
"The people who built the tumuli, and who were a strong and 
robust race, had already appeared before the Bronze people, 
and during the proper Stone Age." 

Eigtjier, in his popular work on Prehistoric Man, supplies 
nothing in relation to the "Stone Age" that is more indicative 
of a high antiquity of the race, so far as the implements contrib- 
ute their light, than is embraced in LyelPs Antiquity of Man 
and Nilsson's Prehistoric Scandinavians, and comparatively little 
of that; or as denoted by similar fabrications that were lately in 
universal use by the present savages of North America, and 
who, as in Scandinavia, were preceded by a race that built the 
mounds and tumuli, besides other relics which denote a much 
higher civilization than the stone implements of their successors. 
Similar implements have been found in such abundance in some 
parts of France as to show the probability of workshops for 
their manufacture. At Pressigny thousands were found, in 
1864, lying superficially in vegetable mould, over an extent of 
three or four acres — consisting of flint-hatchets, knives, &c. 

At the meeting of the "International Congress of Prehistoric 
Archaeology," held at Norfolk, England, Aug., 1868, the Presi- 
dent, Sir John Lubbock, in his Address, thought it important 
to refer to the opinion of the Duke of Argyll — "who," he re- 
marked, "was entirely with the Archaeologists on the antiquity 
of the human race, but differed from them on the subject of the 
prehistoric ages." The Duke had said — " I must observe that 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 393 

Arch geologists are using language on this subject which, if not 
positively erroneous, requires, at least, more rigorous definitions 
than they are disposed to attend to. They talk of the Old Stone 
Age (Palaeolithic), and the Newer Stone Age (Neolithic), and 
of the Bronze Age, and of the Iron Age. Now there is no proof 
whatever that such ages ever existed in the world. If it were 
true that the use of stone has in all cases preceded the use of 
metals, it is quite certain that the same age which was an age of 
stone in one part of the world was an age of metal in another. 
As regards the Eskimo and South Sea Islanders, we are now, 
or were very recently, living in a Stone Age." To which Sir 
John added — " It is evident, also, that some nations, such as the 
Fuegians and the Andarnaners, etc., are living now only in an 
age of stone."* 

Similarity in the implements of a rude people in different ages 
and countries arises from the natural constitution of the human 
mind, which, in its uncultivated state, has always resorted to the 
same ways, as witnessed at the present day, as the most obvious 
and simple, and is a proof of the coincident condition of the hu- 
man mind at the earliest dawn of savage life, and as now pre- 
sented by the barbarous tribes. 

Nevertheless, nothing can be inferred as to the early progress 
of knowledge in civilized nations from its low condition among 
others. In the latter case it is due either to a deterioration of the 
higher standard of the human mind, or to habit and surround- 
ing influences ; the former of which is exemplified among the 
African races, while the latter is most remarkably seen in the 
decline of nations, and more naturally in a devotion to the indo- 
lent ease of a pastoral life, or to the fascinations of the chase. 

Professor Daniel Wilson, of the University of Toronto, 
after describing extensively in his large work on Prehistoric 
Man (1862), the stone and copper implements, and the varieties 
of mounds which are referable to the uncivilized tribes of North 
America, arrives at the conclusion, as expressed in his chapter 
on " Gruesses at the Age of Man," that there is nothing in ves- 
tiges of this nature that denote any thing beyond a recent origin 

* I may say, also, that he has nothing in his late work on "The Origin of Civili- 
zation and the Primitive Condition of Man" beyond what is relative to human prog- 
ress. 



394 . PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

of the human race. In the last sentence of his elaborate work 
he says : 

"I venture to believe that to many reflecting minds it will 
appear that we do in reality make so near an approach to a be- 
ginning in relation to man's intellectual progress, that we can 
form no uncertain guess as to the duration of the human race, 
and find, in this respect, a welcome evidence of harmony between 
the disclosures of science and the dictates of Revelation." 

Nor does the alleged objection as to the early appearance of the 
Negro affect the question, since, according to Professor Muller, of 
Brussels, and other African travellers, there are regions in Africa 
where the coloring matter of the skin is rapidly introduced or 
removed by climate. But it is not improbable that the Negro 
was a natural variety, just as a white person or Albino has been 
the offspring of perfectly black parents. There may have been 
only one, climate contributing its aid to the color of his or her 
descendants. As to other races, whatever their color, stature, 
&c, upon which so much has been said of the slow operation of 
climate in introducing the varieties, the analogies in relation to 
the varieties among animals and plants, as well as observations 
like those of Muller, assure us that a thousand years or less may 
have wrought the changes; and which, unlike malformations, 
are of a constitutional and hereditary nature. 

In regard to the progress of human knowledge as an evidence 
of Man's antiquity, Sir Charles Lyell has this remark in his 
Recapitulation : 

" We see in our own times that the rate of progress in the 
arts and sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge 
increases ; and so, when we carry back our retrospect into the 
past, we must be prepared to find the signs of retardation aug- 
menting in a like geometrical ratio; so that the progress of a 
thousand years at a remote period may correspond to that of a 
century in modern times, and in ages still more remote Man 
would more and more resemble the brutes in that attribute which 
causes one generation exactly to imitate in all its ways the generation 
which preceded it. 17 

Here our Author clearly avows his opinion of the descent of 
Man from the brute, and that he inherited at his earliest evolu- 
tion those characteristics which are the distinguishing peculiari- 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 395 

ties of Instinct, and which impel every species of animals " to 
imitate in all its ways the generation which preceded it." (See 
Demonstration of Instinct, Chapter XYI.) The foregoing quo- 
tation is an impressive example of a series of false conclusions 
of the most momentous importance, both in a scientific and re- 
ligious aspect, and predicated of an assumption wholly destitute 
of foundation — that is, the assumed high antiquity of the human 
race. Were that assumption a truth, then, indeed, would man 
have made no progress, even in the rudest arts, for tens of thou- 
sands of years, and every " century," nay, every year since the 
beginning of Babylon, Nineveh, and Thebes, would far surpass 
in its intellectual development all those 100,000 years during 
which " one generation continued, like the brute, to imitate that 
which preceded it " — in the manufacture of stone knives and 
arrow-heads. It was a foregone conclusion that the first of the 
race must have so closely resembled " the brute " as to sanction 
the great object of establishing a high antiquity as indispensa- 
ble to the Darwinian doctrine of man's descent from a brutal an- 
cestor. In support of this object Sir Charles goes back for an 
authority to an unscientific, heathen people, and brings up Horace 
in the following manner : 

"The opinion entertained generally by the classical writers of 
Greece and Eome, that Man, in the first stage of his existence, 
was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully expressed by 
Horace. ' When animals,' he says, ' first crept forth from the 
newly formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for 
acorns and lurking-places with their nails and fists, then with 
clubs, and at last with arms, which, taught by experience, they 
had forged. They then invented names of things, and words 
to express their thoughts, after which they began to desist from 
war, to fortify cities and enact laws.' " 

The opinion of the brutal nature of the earliest of mankind, 
as founded upon our Author's premises, is contradicted by the 
savage hordes who now inhabit the earth, and who continue to 
imitate, more or less, the degenerate habits of their predecessors. 
In many of the instances the adherence to the past arises from 
the charming indolence of nomadic life. As Tacitus says of the 
cultivated man — " There is a charm in indolence that works by 
imperceptible degrees, and that listless inactivity which at first 



396 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

is irksome grows delightful in the end." Other tribes, such as 
the North American Indian, who offer examples parallel in their 
" stone implements " with the geological man, adhere to the 
usages of their ancestors on account of the excitements of the 
chase and of war ; and other races, like the blacks of Africa, lin- 
ger in the past from a deterioration of mental ability that is not 
likely to become exalted to the primitive standard — hard, per- 
haps, but so ordained by the modifying effects of physical influ- 
ences, and by the law of inheritance. Yet none of these races 
approximate the brute any more than the most creative Genius 
of the Caucasian race. Such a degradation is fully confronted 
by the disclosures of " Science." (See Chapter YII.) 

Ketrogression in knowledge is another characteristic of the 
human mind. Nations rise and fall as if by a law of nature ; 
but while one is falling another is rising.* Europe has had its 
" Dark Ages," when, for six hundred years, there are few materi- 
als for history ; but in the mean time science and art were blaz- 
ing in Arabia, And where is Arabia now? But there has ever 
been a steady progress in knowledge among some of the nations, 
and doubtless such will continue to be the case throughout an 
indefinite future. Nothing of the past is lost, but, on the con- 
trary, it becomes sooner or later the source of improvements. 
"Vires acquirit eundo ;" or, as Horace has it — "Labitur et labetur 
in omne volubilis cevum." 

Although advances in some of the arts, as resulting from an- 
tecedent improvements, have been remarkably great within a 
century past, it only goes to the proof, in view of the constitu- 
tion of the human mind, that Man has occupied the earth but a 
very few thousand years. And our Author is not less mistaken 
in supposing that the sciences, with the exception of inorganic 
Chemistry, have made advances in any thing like a geometrical 
ratio during the last hundred years. He has manifestly founded 
his conclusion upon what is embraced under the designations of 
"Modern Science" and the "New Philosophy" — such as the 
" Science of Modern Geology " — the " Science of Darwinism " — 
the " Science of the Antiquity of Man " — the " Science of Crea- 

* 'Rfiipa kXivel re /cavayet TtaXiv 

'Awavra ra avd-puTzeia. 
Time both degrades and raises all human things. — Sophocles. 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 397 

tion by the Forces and Laws of inorganic nature " — " the Corre- 
lation or Equivalence of Physical and Yital Forces," &c, &c. 
But I shall have endeavored to show that these innovations 
have not only retarded the progress of the sciences, but carry 
them back into darker ages. Besides what I have already shown 
of their fallacies, let us glance for a moment at the science of 
Medicine. What are its principles now? They are founded 
upon the Equivalence of physical and vital forces, and the reve- 
lations of the Chemist's laboratory and the microscope, instead 
of the phenomena of disease and the profound physiological proc- 
esses of animal organization — the old humoral pathology re- 
stored — the practice mostly limited to purifying the blood and 
neutralizing poisons, or destroying animalcula or larger insects, 
and substituting tonics and stimulants for the antiphlogistic 
treatment of fevers and inflammations, which had been incul- 
cated by every enlightened medical Author from the time of 
Hippocrates to our own day. But I have gone extensively over 
the whole of that ground in my Medical and Physiological Com- 
mentaries, and in the Institutes of Medicine. And then as to 
Chemistry — has not its progress been essentially retarded since it 
has given its attention to the manufacture of organic compounds, 
and especially since it invaded the domain of Physiology, and 
even of practical medicine, as inaugurated by Baron Liebig? 

But whence came, it is asked, that high advancement in 
knowledge which is witnessed in the monumental records of 
Assyria and Egypt? Does it not imply a long antecedent march 
through those low stages of mental development that are denoted 
by the several Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Copper ? Does it not 
dismiss from the Bible the Eecord of the Noachian Flood, so 
near, reputedly, to Nineveh and Thebes ? Here Geology sup- 
plies us with a lever which may at least be made to overturn its 
evidences of a pre-Adamite Man. The objection raised is of 
no value in the presence alone of the architecture of the Ark, 
modelled and finished under God's instructions. And who shall 
presume to define the knowledge that was imparted to Adam 
and his immediate descendants, or what might have been their 
acquirements during a life verging upon a thousand years? 
What w^ould have been the accumulated knowledge in the life- 
time of an antediluvian, if, as Sir Charles says of our own times, 



398 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

" the rate of progress in the arts and sciences had proceeded in 
a geometrical ratio as knowledge increased ?" Adam became at 
once an agriculturist. Mankind had become so multiplied at an 
early day that Cain "builded a city (or, rather, Heb., was huild- 
ing), and called the name of the city after the name of his son 
Enoch." All this accumulated knowledge was delivered over 
by Noah and his sons to their descendants — Noah having lived 
350 years, Shem 500 years after the Flood ; and Ashur, the son 
of Shem, is supposed to have begun the building of Nineveh. It 
is also not improbable that the foundation of Babylon was begun 
even in the lifetime of Shem ; for it is stated by Layaed, in his 
"Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon" (Second Expedition), 
that—" If, as Egyptian scholars assert, the name of Babylon is 
found on monuments of the eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, we 
have positive evidence of its existence at least in the fifteenth 
century before Christ." 

It is an established fact, so far as reliable observation goes, 
that the human mind was alike endowed in the remotest past as 
at the present da}^, and is constitutionally so progressive that, as 
soon as the race in any great region of country exceeded in num- 
bers the natural means of subsistence, which would have hap- 
pened at least within one or two thousand years, they would 
have addicted themselves to the cultivation of the earth and 
other useful arts, and there should have descended to us from 
those early stages of society corresponding evidences, unless de- 
stroyed or entombed by a general deluge. Exceptions would 
have constantly existed, as at the present day, when scattered 
tribes would have been devoted to the excitements of the chase 
and of other habits of savage life, till impelled, by the want of 
the necessary means of subsistence, to betake themselves to other 
pursuits. And if the supposed high antiquity of the race had 
any plausibility, the populations should have crowded the entire 
globe before the expiration of a tenth part of the lowest geolog- 
ical estimate of 100,000 years.* This is manifest from the in- 
crease of mankind during the last 4000 years, and a prospective 

* " The law of the geometrical rate of the increase of population," says Lyell, 
"which causes it always to press hard on the means of subsistence, would insure the 
migration, in various directions, of offshoots, from the society first formed abandon- 
ing the area where they had multiplied." 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 399 

view of its extent at the end of 6000 years more. As an exam- 
ple of increase in the New World, it may be reasonably sup- 
posed that within a century hence the present United States will 
have a population of 400,000,000— starting with about 4,000,000 
in 1790. 

The origin of the monumental vestiges of the race of a 
higher order than stone and brass implements lies within the 
compass of four thousand years, and the relics that have been 
lately produced in support of the geological periods can not be 
shown to be of a much earlier date than the Egyptian and 
Assyrian architectures. "We meet with no monumental records 
intermediate between their ruins and the implements of the sup- 
posed " Ages of Stone and Bronze;" but, on the contrary, we 
come abruptly upon a high state of development of the Arts. 

Caroline Paine remarks, in her "Notes of an Oriental Trip" 
— " No wonder that Bruce was regarded as a great story-teller. 
Whose solitary word could be sufficient to satisfy even a credu- 
lous world that there had been found in Thebes, in a state of 
freshness, as if the work of yesterday, such skillful designs, tell- 
ing a tale»of the luxury, refinement, and elegance, the knowledge 
of arts and sciences, of a people who existed more than three 
thousand years ago ?" 

What a " gap is here to be filled !" Where are the interme- 
diate links? The general Flood answers — swept away, or buried 
universally and at one time, just as the forests were extirpated 
and more or less imbedded in the earth. (See Appendix III.) 
Corresponding with this is the coeval poetry of Job ; and at no 
distant day thereafter we meet with the Psalms of David and 
the Proverbs of Solomon. Where are the evidences of the 
gradual approaches of human culture towards this unrivalled 
culmination of the intellectual powers? Their obliteration is an 
equally conclusive proof as the absence of all vestiges of ad- 
vancement in the arts antecedently to the foundations of the 
Assyrian and Egyptian cities, that some great diluvial catastro- 
phe must have been the common cause of this universal destruc- 
tion of the memorials that had illustrated the advances of knowl- 
edge throughout the preceding ages. Without Eevelation our 
knowledge of man's existence would begin with the people of 
Egypt and Assyria, and thus their monumental remains bear 



400 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the highest possible evidence of the invasion of a universal del- 
uge not many centuries anterior to the foundation of Babylon, 
Nineveh, the "hundred-gated Thebes, the earliest Capital of the 
World. "* And farther, this physical proof of the Flood is im- 
mensely enhanced by an equally conclusive demonstration which 
is to be found in this earliest recorded advance of the human 
mind in the arts of civilization, since this must have been de- 
rived from a people who have left no records behind them ; and to 
this conclusion Theoretical Geology and all deniers of the Noa- 
chian Flood must submit. Homer does not refer to Babylon 
or Assyria, which shows that their influence had scarcely come 
within the regions which he surveys. The descendants of those 
" flint-tool " tribes who are represented by Tacitus as living upon 
the morasses of the Vistula have built St. Petersburg and Mos- 
cow. Whatever may be said in behalf of China of a higher 
antiquity than the reputedly "first Dynasty," which is supposed 
to have begun with the Emperor Yu, 2217 B.C., is evidently fabu- 
lous. Such was the opinion of Confucius, who had before him 
the mythological histories of more ancient kings ; but he had 
no confidence in them. 

A difference of opinion, however, exists among learned men 
as to the precise date of the origin of the most ancient monu- 
ments of an advanced civilization. They agree in beginning 
with Menes, whom Lepsius supposes to have founded the Egyp- 
tian Monarchy 3892 years B.C. ; Bunsen, 3623 years ; Uhlemann 
and SeyfYretb, 2780 years; Poole, 2717 years. This difference 
in the estimated dates naturally arises from the nature of the 
records and the fables of the age. But were the earliest date 
founded upon reliable data, it would not affect the question 
immediately before us, and only denote an error of a few hun- 
dred years in the estimated time of the Flood. 

A search, therefore, for any evidences of human progress at 
an earlier date than such as are supplied by Egypt, Babylon, and 
Nineveh, unless of a very limited nature, will be fruitless, and 

* Sir John Lubbock remarks, in his late work on the Origin of Civilization and 
the Primitive Condition of Man, that — " The facts and arguments mentioned in this 
work afford, I think, strong grounds for the following conclusions, namely, that 
existing savages are not the descendants of civilized ancestors — that the primitive 
condition of man was one of utter barbarism." 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 401 

unless, also, of antediluvian origin ; since mankind could not 
have sufficiently multiplied to have accomplished any great 
work during the first five or six centuries after the Flood. At 
the expiration of that time, however, we may reasonably look 
for the commencement of such cities as Thebes, Babylon, and 
Nineveh. 

Nor can it be assumed that the evidences of improvement 
which may be supposed to have connected the stone implements 
with the monuments of a high civilization have been buried by 
any geological catastrophes, as this is contradicted by the nu- 
merous known localities of the stone implements with which the 
"Ages" begin. Nevertheless, as soon as this precautionary re- 
mark was written I came upon the equally conservative infor- 
mation in Lyell's work on the Antiquity of Man, under the head 
of " Imperfections of the Geological Record." Thus, our cautious 
Author : 

" When treating in Chapter YIII. of the dearth of human bones 
in alluvium containing flint implements in abundance, I point- 
ed out that it is no part of the plan of Nature to write every- 
where, and at all times, her autobiographical memoirs. Even of 
those ancient monuments now forming the crust of the earth 
which have not been destroyed by rivers and waves of the sea, 
or which have escaped being melted by volcanic heat, three- 
fourths are submerged beneath the ocean, and are inaccessible to 
man ; while of those which form the dry land, a great part are 
hidden forever from our observation by mountain masses thou- 
sands of feet thick piled over them" — with the unaccountable ex- 
ception of the abounding stone implements and their associate 
extinct mammoths, elephants, rhinoceroses, &c, unless it be for 
the special benefit of " Modern Science." And as the origin of 
Man is referred by the Science to the monkey tribes, it is an 
ominous coincidence with " the dearth of human bones " that not 
a brute of the tribe of apes has been found in the alluvium of 
the stone implements. But what connection, I would ask, has 
the "dearth of human bones" with that "crust of the earth" 
which, geologically speaking, preceded Man and the alluvium 
of the stone implements by myriads of ages? A better reason, 
such as a sparse population, must be made to interpret "the 
dearth of human bones." 

26 



( 



402 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Again, Sir Charles, apparently anticipating objections to the 
absence of connecting-links between the primeval man and the 
advanced in the arts of civilization, resorts to another of those 
assumptions which enter so largely into Theoretical Geology — 

" If," he says, " in conformity with the theory of progression 
[that is, progressively from the lowest to the highest organiza- 
tion], we believe mankind to have risen slowly from a rude and 
humble starting-point, leaps may have successively introduced 
not only higher forms and grades of intellect, but at a much 
remoter period may have cleared AT ONE BOUND the space which 
separated the highest stage of the unprogressive intelligence 
of the inferior animals from THE FIRST and lowest form of IM- 
PROVABLE Reason manifested by Man." That is to say, Man 
" bounded at one leap " out of a brute. 

The foregoing attempt to overcome insuperable difficulties can 
have no other object than that of facilitating the way for the 
Darwinian development of Man, and his "improvable Reason" 
out of a " brute," as suggested in a preceding quotation from the 
work before us on the Antiquity of Man (page 394). 

Human Reason, I saj^, was constitutionally as creative at its 
earliest dawn as at any later period, and the multiplication of 
mankind, under equal circumstances, went on then as now. The 
invention of the Alphabet is lost in the mists of antiquity, while 
the comparatively very inferior art of Printing is of modern date. 
Science had scarcely dawned when the Author of Job, and Da- 
vid, Solomon, Isaiah, and Homer wrote, and no better thinkers 
and writers have since appeared. Greece and Rome perfected 
History, Oratory, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, soon after- 
wards; the immortal Hippocrates had laid the foundation of 
Medicine 400 years B.C. ; and two thousand years more bring us 
to our own times. If, therefore, so much had been accomplished 
within the two thousand years before Christ, beyond which 
we can not ascend, and such a host of brilliant minds contrib- 
uted to the earliest page of history, what, I say, would not this 
same creative Mind have produced had it been in operation ten 
thousand years before the structures, and sculptures, and writ- 
ings of Babylon, Nineveh, and Egypt? It is now too late, as 
the facts are too numerous and demonstrative, for the after- 
thought that the human mind has been subject to changes since 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 403 

the law of " natural selection," or any " law " within the com- 
pass of imagination, produced the physical organization of the 
race ; and, moreover, what is known of the unvarying nature 
of Instinct in all species of animals determines the same stability 
for human Eeason. But, although this be true of Eeason in its 
general aspect, it differs from Instinct in its slow approaches to 
maturity, in cultivation, &c, in every individual, and in mani- 
festing gradations throughout the masses of societ}^. Eminent 
Genius does not often illuminate the world ; but it sparkles as 
well in the ancient as in modern times. Tacitus, looking down 
from his predecessors to our own age, remarks, in his Dialogue 
concerning Oratory, that — 

" There is a general law of nature, hard, perhaps, but wonder- 
fully ordained, and it is this: Nature, whose operations are al- 
ways simple and uniform, never suffers in any age or country 
more than one great example of perfection in the kind. This 
was the case in Greece, that prolific parent of genius and of sci- 
ence. She had but one Homer, one Plato, one Demosthenes. 
The same has happened at Kome — Virgil stands at the head of his 
art, and Cicero is still unrivalled. During a space of seven hun- 
dred years our ancestors were struggling to reach the summit of 
perfection. Cicero at length arose. He thundered forth his im- 
mortal energy, and Nature was satisfied with the wonder she had 
made. The force of genius could go no farther. A new road to 
fame was to be found. We aimed at wit, and gay conceit, and 
glittering sentences. The change, indeed, was great, but it nat- 
urally followed the new form of government. Genius died with 
public liberty." 

The review which I have now made of the alleged evidences 
of the high antiquity of Man, and of the ages during which he is 
supposed to have been slowly elevated above the brute, natural- 
ly leads us to inquire where, in the calendar of time, shall we 
place those historical people, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and so on 
down to Noah, who was contemporary with the immediate de- 
scendants of Adam, and with the Postdiluvians three hundred 
and fifty years ? What disposition shall be made of the account 
of Creation ? What of the events in the garden of Eden ? What 
of the meaning, the authenticity, and the value of such affirma- 
tions as the following : " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 



404 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

shall all be made alive." " The first man Adam was made a liv- 
ing Soul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit." " Death reigned 
from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after 
the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of Him 
that was to come" &c, &c. "Where shall we look for the origin 
of sin, and what shall be said of its imputation to Adam and 
Eve? Thus, and in various other ways, both in the Old and 
New Testaments, we learn that if the Mosaic account of the Cre- 
ation of Man be rejected, so must be all in the Scriptures that is 
of any interest to mankind. If Adam was not the first Man, 
then is "our preaching vain, and your faith also vain" — words 
without meaning, a mere delusion. 

I am reminded, by the booming of cannon on this day of the 
centennial anniversary of the birth of Baron Yon Humboldt, of 
the very high authority of this Philosopher, and his opinion on 
the question before us may not be neglected. This will be the 
more interesting by placing in immediate connection with his 
defense of the high antiquity of the human race his opinion of 
the relation of Life to the physical forces, and his approval of the 
nebular hypothesis. Indeed, from the circumstance of his hav- 
ing espoused the materialistic doctrine of Organic Life, I had oc- 
casion, in the Institutes of Medicine, to advert, in the following 
manner, to opinions which led the accomplished scholar Ed- 
ward Everett to say that the Baron "owes his position in the 
intellectual world to his grasp of the whole domain of science, 
and the majestic range of his generalizations." 

The Baron, in his "generalization" of the forces and phenom- 
ena of nature, undertakes, upon this scheme of philosophy as ap- 
plicable to inorganic matter, to bring the organic world within the 
domain of that philosophy, a distinct enunciation of which occurs 
in his " Aspects of Nature" Thus — 

"Eeflection and continued study in the domains of Physiology 
and Chemistry," says this learned man, " have shaken my earlier 
belief in a peculiar so-called Yital Force. In 1797, at the close 
of my work entitled ' Yersuche,' &c, I already declared that I by 
no means regarded the existence of such peculiar Yital Forces as 
demonstrated. Since that time I have no longer called peculiar 
forces what may possibly only be the operation of the concurrent 
action of the several long-known substances and their material 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 405 

forces." "I have said, in 'Cosmos' — 'The myths of impondera- 
ble matter and of Vital Forces peculiar to each organism have 
complicated and perplexed the view of nature.' " It should here be 
considered that this degradation of man and other living beings 
formed an indispensable element in our Author's plan of the 
"generalization of nature." Without it, Cosmos could not have 
been written. " The view of nature " would have been too much 
" perplexed." 

Besides the disposition which I have always endeavored to 
manifest of affording the physical school of organic nature an 
opportunity of explaining their philosophy in their own unre- 
served way, I have also in view, in the present case, my oft-reit- 
erated proof that it is the tendency of this generalization of the 
forces of nature to conduct its projectors and advocates to still 
greater violations of physiological laws, since those laws positive- 
ly enjoin an ascription of the "first origin" of every existing spe- 
cies of animal and plant to a Supreme, Intelligent, Creative Pow- 
er. But, since this is ignored by the doctrine I am about to cite, 
there is necessarily an attendant implication by our Author that 
man and other organic beings were "brought forth," in the lan- 
guage of Theoretical Geology, by the " parturitive powers of the 
earth ;" or, as explained physiologically, the properties or forces 
impressed upon matter assembled the requisite sixteen or seven- 
teen elements for every species of animal and plant, after having 
decompounded their binary compounds, and then united them 
into an almost endless variety of precise ternary, quaternary, and 
more complicated compounds; then arranged them into a multi- 
tude of organs of complex designs, developed Reason and In- 
stinct, and ended by enabling man, and all mammiferous animals 
and unfledged birds, to provide sustenance for themselves in their 
state of infancy. (See Chapter VII.) Here is the intended par- 
agraph from Cosmos, which lets us farther into the philosophy of 
"positive science." Thus — 

"In a work like the present we can venture on no more than 
an allusion to the mysteries that involve the question of modes of ori- 
gin" — "Geographical investigations regarding the ancient seat, 
the so-called 'cradle of the human race,' are not devoid of a 
mythical character." Our Author then quotes approvingly from 
his brother William, as follows: "We do not know, either from 



406 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

history or from authentic tradition, any period of time in which the 
human race has not been divided into social groups. Whether 
the gregarious condition was original, or of subsequent occurrence, 
we have no historic evidence to show. The separate mythical rela- 
tions found to exist independently of one another in different 
parts of the earth appear to refute the first hypothesis, and con- 
cur in ascribing the generation of the whole human race to the 
union of one pair. The general prevalence of this myth has 
caused it to be regarded as a traditionary record transmitted 
from the primitive man to his descendants. But this very cir- 
cumstance seems rather to prove that it has no historical founda- 
tion, but has simply arisen from an identity in the mode of intel- 
lectual conception, which has everywhere led man to adopt the 
same conclusion regarding identical phenomena; in the same 
manner as many myths have doubtless arisen, not from any his- 
torical connection existing between them, but rather from an 
identity in human thought and imagination. Another evidence 
in favor of the purely mythical nature of this belief is afforded by 
the fact that the first origin of mankind — a phenomenon which is 
wholly beyond the sphere of experience — is explained in perfect 
conformity with existing views, being considered on the principle 
of the colonization of some desert island or remote mountainous val- 
ley at a period when mankind had already existed for thousands of 
years. It is in vain that we direct our thoughts to the solution 
of the great problem of the first origin, since man is too intimately 
associated with his own race and with the relations of time to 
conceive of the existence of an individual independently of a preced- 
ing generation and age [or self-existent]. A solution of those 
difficult questions, which can not be determined by inductive 
reasoning or by experience — whether the belief in this presumed 
traditional condition be actually based on historical evidence, or 
whether mankind inhabited the earth in gregarious associations 
from the origin of the race — can not, therefore, be determined 
from any philological data ; and yet its elucidation ought not to 
be sought from other sources." 

We may not be surprised, therefore, that our Author's gener- 
alization of nature embraces Laplace's doctrine of the evolution 
of the solar system, and now generally adopted by Geologists 
and Astronomers. Besides its entire departure from the Mosaic 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 407 

Narrative, the subject is invested with a certain degree of physi- 
ological interest, on account of the constitution of the primary 
rocks, and the analogical reasoning which may be thence carried 
to the origin of living beings in the forces and laws of inorganic 
nature from the assumed evolution of those rocks from a gaseous 
chaotic state, exclusively through, the properties impressed upon 
matter. This I endeavored to expound in my work on Theoret- 
ical Geology, and recur to the subject now (and to be resumed 
in Appendix I.), for the purpose of showing the extent of the 
harmony with which Cosmos has carried out the generalization 
of nature, and of giving to its system all the advantages that can 
inure from any consistency; or, on the other hand, of enabling 
it to accept as graciously the penalties of any defects, and thus 
subserve, in either case, some of the greatest truths and princi- 
ples in nature and Eeligion. The following extract embraces the 
doctrine. When speaking of the origin of aerolites, he says — 

"I would ask why the elementary substances that compose 
one group of cosmical bodies, or one planetary sj^stem, may not 
in a great measure be identical? "Why should we not adopt 
this view, since we may conjecture that these planetary bodies, 
like all the larger or smaller agglomerated masses revolving 
round the sun, have been thrown off from the once far more ex- 
panded solar atmosphere, and been formed from vaporous rings 
describing their orbits round the central body." 

In respect to the " Nebular Hypothesis," I shall endeavor to 
demonstrate its fallacy, as well as its conflict with Revelation, in 
Appendix I. It is now my purpose to remark of the foregoing 
quotations that if the want of "experience" disqualifies us for 
judging of "the first origin of mankind," and if we do not 
choose to accept the Mosaic Narrative as " historical," it is high- 
ly incumbent upon physiological science to show that the laws 
of nature utterly contradict the doctrine that organic beings were 
evolved by those laws, and that they, therefore, proclaim the de- 
pendence of such beings upon an Intelligent, Personal Creator. 
In the former case we have an ample amount of "experience," 
and if the latter be admitted, all nature ceases at once to be mys- 
terious, and mystery associates itself with God alone. The doc- 
trine of "experience" is as applicable to all the miracles and 
prophecies of the Old Testament, and to all the most essential 



408 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

means upon which the authenticity of Christianity depends, as 
to the origin of mankind ; and it would be quite as fatal in sci- 
ence, and even in the ordinary pursuits of man, as it is to Relig- 
ion. It is even possible that Humboldt would not have won 
laurels in America had it not been for the inductive philosophy 
of Columbus. Our Author appropriates in Cosmos the histor- 
ical facts of the Old Testament, so far as they relate to simply 
human affairs, because it alone informs us of that era of man- 
kind, and this information was important to Cosmos. And 
herein lies the distinction between that experience which is so 
readily accepted on the mere testimony of man, and that in 
which man's agency is associated with Divine interposition, till 
it finally culminates in the distinction between experience and 
faith in their abstract relations. A trust, therefore, in the mere- 
ly historical facts of the Bible (for our Author has been de- 
fended upon this principle) is no proof whatever of a belief in 
Eevelation or in its Author — no more so than the Jew's trust 
in the biography of Christ, as it respects His humanity, is a 
proof that he is a Christian. It is not unusual, indeed, as we 
have already seen, for the mere Pantheist to employ the terms 
creator, "the unknowable," and sometimes even God, as a sort 
of compromise with the Theist, and even to make professions of 
Christianity. But this has signally failed after the day of nov- 
elty, and personal influence, and mutual admiration has ceased, 
and the authors and actors have passed into history. Injustice 
is sometimes done, as was remarkably the case with the Religio- 
Medict] for, although it abounds throughout with evidences of 
the highest order of faith, yet its Author incurred the charge of 
infidelity ; and more than fifty years after his death, when time 
had extinguished animosities, Samuel Johnson thought it neces- 
sary to contribute the weight of his mind and character to the 
just cause of rescuing the Author's memory from this imputa- 
tion, notwithstanding Browne had made an able defense of him- 
self. But it shows the strong course of reason in its delibera- 
tions upon doctrines and professions. It shows us emphatically 
that no such rescue can await those who reject or explain away 
the Narrative of Creation — even such as do not accept its obvi- 
ous interpretation. The demonstration made in Chapter VII. of 
the creation of man and animals in a state of maturity, and of 



ANTIQUITY OF MAN, ETC. 409 

the absurdities of all the doctrines that depart from the Mosaic 
account of the origin of living beings, imparts an immense force 
to the probability that all other parts of the Narrative of Crea- 
tion must be received in that same literal sense which had for 
ages commended itself to the unhesitating judgment of mankind. 
But in our next following chapter, and in Appendix L, I shall 
bring up a strong amount of proof to substantiate what my dem- 
onstration of the creation of man and animals in a state of matu- 
rity so forcibly implies. Were the Narrative of Creation dis- 
missed from the Bible by common consent, or in any respect 
modified in its statement as to the production of man and ani- 
mals in a mature condition, all that relates to the science of or- 
ganic life would still remain an impregnable shield in its defense. 

An admission that the Bible is, in a general sense, a work of 
great use to mankind on account of its moral influences, is by no 
means a proof of belief in a personal God. And equally so, for 
the same* reason, a countenance has been given by the Infidel 
even to Christianity. Their useful influences are admitted by 
all; and the propagandist of infidelity finds his most successful 
policy in avoiding direct collisions with religious faitb, and oc- 
casional affectations of a devout sentiment. The admonitions of 
history have taught him this useful lesson. But the general im- 
port of the doctrines inculcated forms the criterion by which the 
verdict is adjusted ; and this, as we have just seen of the distin- 
guished Author of that truly pious work, the Religio- Medici, is 
apt to be rigorously dispensed. And so with Baron Humboldt, 
with incomparably greater justice; of whom it was said by Pro- 
fessor Agassiz, in his Address on the Humboldt centennial anni- 
versary, that — " The modern school of Atheists claim him as their 
leader. As such we find him represented by Burmeister in 
his scientific Letters. Others bring forward his sympathy with 
Christian culture as an evidence of his adherence to Christianity 
in its broadest sense. It is difficult to find in Humboldt's own 
writings any clue to the exact nature of his own convictions." — 
New York Daily Tribune, September 15, 1869. 

Finally, besides the great question of the identity of the forces 
and laws of organic and inorganic beings, the present discussion, 
like much of the preceding, has been equally in behalf of scien- 
tific interests, especially that which concerns organic life; for 



410 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

nothing can be more opposed to the "experience" upon which 
are founded the facts and principles in physiology than the as- 
sumed or implied origin of living beings in the forces which rule 
the inorganic world ; and coming to the intricate, but methodical 
constitution of the primary rocks, the evidence of a direct inter- 
position of Creative Power, acting in co-operation with the prop- 
erties impressed upon matter, is as palpable as the more complete 
exercise of the same Power in the production of living beings out 
of the elements of matter. But the demonstration as to the exer- 
cise of Creative Energy in the formation of the globe will be re- 
served for Appendix I. To assume, as does the nebular hypoth- 
esis, and that of the spontaneity of living beings, that the ele- 
ments of matter were endowed with 'the independent power of 
generating their organized conditions, is so contrary to all expe- 
rience and the surrounding facts, that it supposes a condition of 
things that is equivalent to Creative Energy ; according to our 
demonstration in Chapter VII. It is an illusion, therefore, to im- 
agine that science divests itself of causes that elude its ambitious 
grasp by assuming that "blind material forces " will explain the 
origin of both living beings and the primary crystalline rocks, 
since, in either case, it demands a condition of forces and laws 
which experience assures us, and science admits, does not exist at 
present, and therefore has never belonged to the constitution of 
nature. Science, therefore, in separating from Supernatural Pow- 
er, convicts itself of inconsistency ; for it is contrary to all "ex- 
perience," to all that is known of nature, to suppose that living- 
beings, or the primitive earth, emerged from the elements of mat- 
ter without at the same time supposing that some supernatural 
agency was concerned in the work. In the one case, therefore, 
science stultifies itself; while, in yielding to the agency of an In- 
telligent Creative Power, it simply obeys the exigencies of the 
facts and the dictates of that Eeason which professes to be a rude 
imitator of some of the Designs which challenge its faith in a 
higher order of Reason. 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 411 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THEORETICAL GEOLOGY, CONTINUED, IN ITS RELATIONS TO OR- 
GANIC BEINGS, TO THE DEVELOPMENTAL DOCTRINES, AND TO 
THE NARRATIVES OF CREATION AND THE FLOOD. — THEOLOG- 
ICAL GEOLOGISTS RESUMED. 

In the present chapter I shall have much to say of the Narra- 
tives of Creation and the Flood, and the demonstration of their 
Divine origin will be continued in the Appendices. These Nar- 
ratives, independently of their general interest and importance, 
maybe shown by a variety of concurring proofs to have been di- 
rect and literal Eevelations to man. The first establishes the en- 
dowment of man with a Soul — "created a living Soul" — and 
that so far he is made "in the Image of God." But the Narra- 
tive is so perverted by Theoretical Geology as to render it worth- 
less ; and as to that of the Flood, it is now very generally aban- 
doned as a myth. One proof alone, howeyer, as will be shown 
in Appendix II., and farther substantiated in Appendix III., de- 
termines, by its comprehensive import, the Divine Revelation of 
the Narrative of the Flood in its various details. That particu- 
lar proof consists in the capacity of the Ark, since, as will be 
shown in Appendix II, its capacity was most ample for all the 
land animals known at the present day, and for an abundant sup- 
ply of food ; while a ship of a thousand tons would have accom- 
modated all the land animals known to Moses. How absurd, 
therefore, the supposition that the writer of the Narrative would 
have devised a structure of the dimensions of the Ark. In this 
connection I would also refer to the important proof of a general 
flood, at the reputed era, which I have suggested in the preced- 
ing chapter — namely, that there are no monumental vestiges of 
any advances in the arts of a higher antiquity than those of 
Egypt and Assyria, where we abruptly meet with a high order 
of civilization. 

And now, leaving for a moment our method of direct facts and 



412 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

arguments, I would ask those clergymen who falter in their faith 
as to the Noachian Flood, whether they do not inflict upon Chris- 
tianity a very dangerous wound by necessarily discarding along 
with the Flood one of our Saviour's most emphatic declarations 
of His mission for the salvation of man ? What answer will they 
make to the infidel who may challenge them with the following 
words : 

"As the DAYS OF Noah were, so shall also the coming of the 
Son of Man he. For as in the days that were before the Flood 
they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, un- 
til the day that No AH entered into the Ark, and Jcneiu not until 
the Flood came, and took them all away ; so shall also 

THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN BE." 

There is no possibility of evading this most important and 
solemn parallel which our Lord institutes between the antedilu- 
vian and post-diluvian world, between the unexpected Flood and 
His own coming, &c. 

And farther: the exploded Narrative of the Flood has a very 
important bearing upon the developmental schemes, and therefore 
upon the doctrine of materialism as to the Soul. If there were a 
Flood, and man and animals were preserved as related, it estab- 
lishes the one only Creation as revealed. I shall, therefore, have 
something demonstrative upon the subject in Appendices II. and 
III. If the Narrative of Creation be admitted to be of Divine Au- 
thority, then also must be that of the Flood, since the construc- 
tion, consistency, and other various internal proofs of both Narra- 
tives, are so much alike, there could have been but one writer for 
both. Moreover, the preservation in the Ark, " to keep seed alive 
upon all the face of the earth" represents the Creator as acting with 
that consistency which we unavoidably associate with Infinite 
Wisdom in the perpetuation of a systematic whole, and is fatal 
to all the hypotheses of progressive developments, of antecedent 
creations and extinctions, and of post-diluvial creations. The 
foregoing statement in the Narrative is clearly equivalent to an 
affirmation that there had been none of the creations and extinc- 
tions which Theoretical Geology teaches; else why should not 
the Creator, in His consistency, have continued that supposed 
system, or, at least have carried it out in relation to animals and 
plants ? And to suppose a local flood, and an imperfect preser- 



THE MOSAIC NAKKATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 413 

vation in the Ark and a subsequent creation of such animals as 
were not preserved, as some have assumed, is to suppose an act 
of inconsistency whose analogies in the hand of man would sub- 
ject him to ridicule. Even the admitted preservation of the hu- 
man race, by the same reasoners, through the instrumentality of 
the Ark, carries with it, upon Unity of Design, that of terres- 
trial animals also. The creation of man and animals in a state 
of maturity, as I have variously demonstrated, particularly in 
Chapters VII. and VIII., establishes the commencement of the 
existing condition of organic nature at the very beginning of 
time. "Male and female created He them. Be fruitful and 
multiply, and replenish the earth." And such is Divine consist- 
ency, the Creator carried out the principle when He introduced 
His " only Begotten Son " upon earth ; and this remarkable con- 
sistency in conforming to the law established at "the beginning" 
allies itself with the other evidences of our Lord's Divinity. 

Before proceeding farther with our inquiries, let us look at 
the present geological estimate of the earth's antiquity, and the 
premises upon which it is founded. This is very well explained 
by Biichner in his work on Force and Matter. Thus — 

"The so-called Coal-formation alone required, according to 
Bischof, 1,000,177 years; according to Chevandier's calculation, 
672,788 years. (See Appendix III.) The tertiary strata re- 
quired for their development about 350,000 years ; and before 
the originally incandescent earth could cool down from a temper- 
ature of 2000 degrees to 200, there must, according to Bischof's 
calculation, have elapsed a period of 350,000,000 }^ears. Volger, 
finally, calculates that the time requisite for the deposit of the 
strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648,000,000 
years." The process of cooling and the deposit of the strata oc- 
cupied, therefore, 1,000,000,000 years, minus two years. (See 
Appendix I.) 

I shall ultimately return to some of the foregoing statements ; 
but in the mean time I will here dispose of another made by the 
Author last quoted, that — 

"The large telescope of Lord Eosse has disclosed stars so dis- 
tant that their light must have travelled 30,000,000 years before it 
reached the earth," or 189,216,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. 

That is the received doctrine. But it involves several impos- 



414 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sibilities — such as that of knowing the relative distances of the 
stars from each other, the intermediate stars between the most 
remote and the observer, &c. It is just now ascertained that the 
reputed distance of the earth from the sun (only ninety-five 
millions) has been exaggerated several millions; while Sirius, 
which is probably the nearest of the fixed stars, is computed to 
be not less than 100,000 x 194,000,000 miles ; and it is conjec- 
tured that others are as distant from each other as Sirius from 
the sun. Herschell supposed that his telescope reached to stars 
497 times more distant from us than Sirius, which would require 
about 1500 years for their light to reach the earth. Admitting 
this to be true, and allowing 500 years more for Eosse's tele- 
scope, it will be giving very ample latitude, or 12,614,400,000,- 
000,000 miles, for the most prolific imagination, or at least as far 
as any reliable mathematical calculations are likely to penetrate. 

The foregoing estimate of the antiquity of the earth affords 
abundant time for the developmental doctrines of organic be- 
ings; and could we not disprove the nebular hypothesis, as I 
shall attempt in Appendix I, then it must be conceded that Ge- 
ology does not demand an unreasonable time for the consolida- 
tion of the globe ; and if this were so, it would give plausibility 
to the doctrines of the development of living beings by the agen- 
cies of inorganic nature, thoroughly undermine our faith in a 
Personal Creator, and establish for the Narrative of Creation the 
very first rank among all human inventions. But the period of 
the formation of the coal-measures and its duration, and of the 
fossiliferous rocks, rests not upon the nebular hypothesis, but 
upon the assumption Of a progressive development and extinc- 
tion of organic beings ; and it is now my purpose, in part, to 
pursue Theoretical Geology into the wreck of mortality, where 
all its labors and hopes are employed in bringing to light what 
remains of the past. 

The doctrine of " successive creations and extinctions of ani- 
mals," which originated in Theoretical Geology, has meant noth- 
ing more than the present modified phraseology of the develop- 
ment of organic beings by the forces and laws of inorganic na- 
ture. But the organization of those beings that were entombed 
in the rocks anterior to the Flood, and when violent causes, soon 
after the organization of the globe, were in destructive operation, 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 415 

is precisely the same as that of the animals of our own times. 
The condition of physical nature has subsequently improved as 
it respects certain destructive causes; and if the early period 
when the forces of nature were in turbulent operation was con- 
ducive to the generation of living beings, how shall we explain 
the abrupt termination of the supposed creative laws of nature 
after the disappearance of the admitted desolating period, and 
when all things had become so much more favorable to their 
supposed generative endowment? (See Chapter VIII. and Ap- 
pendix I.) The speculatist is silent in the presence of such an 
appeal to his own premises ; or only endeavors to lash the imagi- 
nation into those absurdities by unceasing, bold, and romantic 
devices of "a Eeign of Insects" — "a Eeign of Fishes" — "a 
Reign of Serpents" — "a Reign of Mastodons, which immediate- 
ly preceded the Reign of Man " — " the pre- Adamite Man," and 
by other appeals to the imagination abounding with surprise, 
which are expected to carry the force of premises, and as if rele- 
vant to the subject.* And so this goodly planet is turned over 

* The following is a common example of this rhodomontade : 

"It was not," says Miller, in his Testimony of the Rocks, "until the earlier ages 
of the Oolite system had passed away, that the class of Reptiles received its fullest 
development. And certainly very wonderful was the development which it then did 
receive. Reptiles became everywhere the Lords and Masters of this lower world. 
When airy class of the air-breathing vertebrates is very largely developed, we find it 
taking possession of all the three old terrestrial elements — earth, air, and water." 
"Last of all, the true placental mammals appear. And thus, tried by the test of per- 
fect reproduction, the great vertebral division receives its full development.'''' "What a 
contrast with the Mosaic Narrative ! 

An eminent Geologist and Zoologist has reduced the different "Reigns," which 
figure in Theoretical Geology, to the following scientific order : 

"We distinguish," he says, "four Ages of Nature, comprehending the great geo- 
logical divisions, namely — 1st. The Primary, or Paleozoic Age, comprising the Lower 
Silurian, the Upper Silurian, and the Devonian. During this Age there were no air- 
breathing animals. The Fishes were Masters of Creation. We may, therefore, call 
it the Reign of Fishes. [The " Reign of Insects " being left out.] 

" 2d. The Secondary Age, comprising the Carboniferous Formation, the Trias, the 
Oolite, and the Cretaceous Formations. This is the epoch in which air-breathing 
animals first appear. The Reptiles predominate over the other classes, and we may 
therefore call it the Reign of Reptiles. 

" 3d. The Tertiary Age, comprising the Tertiary Formations. During this Age 
terrestrial mammals, of great size, abound. This is the Reign of Mammals. 

"4th. The Modern Age, characterized by the appearance of the most perfect of 
all created beings. This is the Reign of Man." — Agassiz's Principles of Zoology. 



416 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

as worthless for any other purpose, for millions of ages, to the 
useless existence of the animal tribes, until Man and Woman — 
male and female — happened to be evolved from their brutal pred- 
ecessors. But with " the Reign of Man" comes the only system 
that can be creditable to its Author ; such as every philosophical 
mind will allow to be necessary to a plan devised by Infinite 
Wisdom — such a plan, indeed, as man himself would have pro- 
jected, and therefore, by parity of reason, the supposed fragment- 
ary system of meaningless creations (if Creation be ever meant), 
equally dishonors the wisdom both of God and man. Such, too, 
was the opinion of one who did not enjoy the light of Eevela- 
tion. Thus — 

"For what purpose" says Cicero, "was the fabric of this world 
constructed? Was it merely for the purpose of perpetuating the 
various species of trees and herbs, which are not endowed even 
with sensation f The supposition is absurd. Or was it for the ex- 
clusive use of animals ? It is not at all more probable that the 
Deity would have produced so magnificent a structure for the 
sake of beings which, though endowed with sensation, possess 
neither speech nor intelligence. For whom, then, was the world 
produced? Doubtless, for those beings who are alone endowed 
with Season." 

But, says Theoretical Geology, animals were created for enjoy- 
ment as well as for the uses of man. Certainly, as a subordinate 
consideration, but surely never for that alone, however brief the 
time — for this would bear no correspondence with the end of 
man's existence upon earth. The life of either is so very brief 
that it would scarcely be worth possessing, even with unalloyed 
happiness, were there not something of greater moment beyond. 
This is especially true of animals in their relations to man, whose 
span of existence, in a large proportion of species, does not reach 
a dozen years, and there are thousands of species which flourish 
for a few weeks only ; and half of the human race die in infancy 
and childhood. And what a contrast between the happiness of 
man and that of animals ! What is truly valuable of the former 
is intellectual, while that of the latter is purely sensual. Sensa- 
tion forms the only distinction between animals and plants in re- 
gard to their obvious designs to subserve the uses of the human 
race. But there is nothing like the argumentum ad hominem. 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 417 

Is there, then, any one who will affirm that human life would be 
in the least desirable upon the supposed principle, were it limited 
to the space of ten years and to mere sensual enjoyments? That 
is the test — incomparably less severe and appalling than such, as 
has been quoted from the great leaders in the "New Philoso- 
phy," Biichner, Spencer, &o. If we apply that test to animals, it 
will be seen that the hypothesis upon which Geology has rested 
its final cause of the creation of animals millions of years antece- 
dently to man's creation is a mere fiction ; since we may well 
conclude that what man rejects as absurd upon a question which 
he may comprehend, the Creator would not have ingrafted upon 
His designs. 

It appears, therefore, that, were human Eeason to devise a sys- 
tem of organic life similar to the present^ it would not be so un- 
true to itself as to bring animals into being for the mere object of 
sensual enjoyment, nor till they could subserve the purposes in- 
tended by their existence, and therefore not until man's creation. 
More especially, it can not be doubted that fundamental princi- 
ples which are so obvious to man must have governed the Crea- 
tor in the details of that plan which His wisdom ordained for the 
benefit of those rational beings whose temporal existence upon 
earth has mainly a reference to another life of endless duration. 

The same philosophy is applicable to the formation of the 
earth, and declares the fallacy of the imputed experimental sys- 
tem of remodellings for improved adaptations to plants and ani- 
mals, and its final completion for the better accommodation of 
man. What would be said of the Architect who, in maturing a 
plan for a human habitation, should first try his skill upon a 
barn ; but finding, on its completion, that it was suitable only to 
animals, should demolish the fabric, and then proceed with the 
same materials to repeat similar experiments till he should have 
reached the perfected plan which was already in his mind when 
he began the childish "remodellings?" But thanks to the Mo- 
saic Narrative for the complete exposition of the only system 
which human reason can recognize as consistent with Infinite 
Wisdom. It is one stupendous whole — conforming itself not 
only to the final causes of the earth and its inhabitants in every 
detail, but to the evidences supplied by the constitution of the 
globe itself, and by the whole profound philosophy of organic 

27 



418 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

life. All this, too, I shall have shown beyond the possibility of 
refutation, because it reposes upon fundamental facts. (See Ap- 
pendix I.) But I may now say that the occurrence of fossil ex- 
uviae of animals and plants in the lower sedimentary rocks — 
down in contact with granite — proves that there was no pro- 
longed preparation for their reception, but that the beings which 
they represent were created as soon as the primary rocks were 
consolidated. 

If such discussions are tedious to some, they are too important 
to the questions before us to be neglected. The Narratives of 
Creation and the Flood demand it. The Soul of man and its 
immortality are deeply concerned in their natural import. If 
organic beings were slowly introduced upon earth by the forces 
of inorganic nature, or if not created as represented in the Mo- 
saic Narrative, then has man no Soul and no hereafter. (See 
Chapter VII.) The advocates of spontaneity of living beings or 
of any developmental plan call as little, in a general sense, upon 
a Personal Creator as Laplace in his Mecanique Celeste; but the 
following is too good an example to the contrary to be neglected. 
It comes from Hugh Miller, who has put it into his Old Red 
Sandstone. Thus — 

" We speak of the infinity of Deity — of His inexhaustible va- 
riety of mind; but we speak of it until the idea becomes a piece 
of mere commonplace in our mouths. It is well to be brought 
to feel that we ourselves are barren-minded, and that in Him all 
fullness dwelleth; succeeding creations, each with its myriads of 
existences, do not exhaust Him. He never repeats Himself. The 
curtain drops at his command over one scene of existence full of 
wisdom and beauty — it rises again, and all is glorious, wise, and 
beautiful as before, and all is new. Who can sum up the amount 
of Wisdom whose record He has written in the rocks — Wisdom 
exhibited in the succeeding creations ere man ivas, but which was ex- 
hibited surely not in vain. 11 In his Testimony of the Rocks he re- 
turns to the subject after the following manner: "Such, so far 
as the Geologist has been able to read the record of his science, 
has been the course of Creation from the first beginnings upon 
our planet until the appearance of man. And very wonderful, 
surely, has that course been ! How strange a procession! — 
that long procession of beings which, starting out of the blank 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 419 

depths of the by-gone eternity, is still defiling across the stage, 
and of which we ourselves form some of the passing figures. 
Who shall declare the profound meanings with which these geo- 
logic hieroglyphics are charged, or indicate the ultimate goal 
at which the long procession is destined to arrive?" 

All this romance for the mere purpose of inculcating Theoret- 
ical Geology, under the delusion that the "record of the rocks" 
magnifies the glory of the Creator ! But it may be asked in be- 
half of common sense, if the originals of the old clam-shells and 
piscatory exuviae were not " exhibited in vain," to whom was 
that "beautiful scene of existence exhibited?" It will not be 
assumed that the "record" is any farther useful than, to subserve 
the purposes of a " Creative Law," and so exclude the Deity from 
His own work ; and before Theoretical Geology can arrive at the 
" beautiful " objects " which started out of the blank depths of the by- 
gone eternity" there must be a large expenditure of time and 
gunpowder. No ; we have in living nature so much of the evi- 
dence of Wisdom and Design, which Theoretical Geology never 
deigns to consider in contrast with the fossils of the rocks, that 
the eminent Author of the late Plurality of Worlds has consid- 
ered it abundantly ample, and therefore infers that all beyond is 
a mere wilderness of waste. 

Such is Theoretical Geology ; and that the exuviae of animals 
and plants are its main foundation, we have the admission of all 
geologists to the latest day, of whom the following authorities 
may be taken as examples. Thus, the Eev. Dr. Buckland, in 
his Bridgewater Treatise — 

"The study of organic remains (or medals of the rocks) forms 
the peculiar FEATURE OR basis of modern geology, and is the 
main cause of the progress this science has made since the com- 
mencement of the present century." " We shall find in them 
the GREAT master-key whereby we may unlock the secret his- 
tory of the earth. They are documents which contain the evi- 
dences of revolutions and catastrophes long anterior to the crea- 
tion of the human race." "To attempt an investigation of the 
structure and revolutions of the earth without applying minute 
attention to the evidences afforded by organic remains, would be 
no less absurd than to undertake to write the history of any an- 
cient people without reference to the documents afforded by their 



420 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

medals and inscriptions, their monuments, and the ruins of their 
cities and temples."* " Without the organic remains the proofs 
of the lapse of such long periods as geology shows to have been 
occupied in the formation of the strata of the earth would have 
been comparatively few and inconclusive." 

The Eev. Professor Sedgwick, in his preface to a Discourse 
on the Studies of the University of Cambridge (1850), presents 
the doctrine of the progression of organic beings as follows : 

" There are traces among the old deposits of the earth of an 
organic progression among the successive forms of life. They 
are to be seen in the absence of mammalia in the older, and their 
very rare appearance in the newer secondary groups; in the 
diffusion of warm-blooded quadrupeds, frequently of unknown 
genera, in the older tertiary system, and in their great abun- 
dance, and frequently of known genera, in the upper portions of 
the same series ; and lastly, in the recent appearance of man on 
the surface of the earth." 

And thus, also, Professor Agassiz, in a published letter, dated 
November 13, 1869 — " In some opening remarks of a course on 
Geology which I am now delivering in the University, I said 
that the ' Theological interpretation of the Book of Genesis giv- 
ing six thousand years as the age of the world was a hindrance 
to the understanding of geological evidence, and no one who 
started with this idea, and allowed his researches to be influ- 
enced by it, could be a [theoretical] geologist.' " 

From what, therefore, I have already said of "Successive Cre- 
ations," of the "Typical System," of "Creation by Law," and of 
Spontaneous Generation, all of which fall under the develop- 
mental plan ; and from what remains to be shown of the rapid 
stratification of the earth in the Appendix on its Organization, 
and in that upon the Coal Formations, it becomes manifest that 
the fossil remains are an illusion in their geological application, 
and that the violent causes which were in operation immediately 
after the era of Creation interpret the abundance of fossiliferous 
rocks and their speedy formation. We read of a man who car- 
ried in his pocket a specimen-brick to show the character of a 

* What, therefore, shall be said of the history of man anterior to Thebes and Nin- 
eveh? Where are "their monuments, and the ruins of their cities and temples?" 
Where shall we look for information ? (See Chapter XII.) 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 421 

house which he was anxious to sell. This would answer suffi- 
ciently well for the fossil exuviae, a single one of which is as 
good as the whole for imparting information as to the aggregate 
meaning of all the rest. 

It is not to geological pursuits that I raise an objection. On 
the contrary, inquiries into the structure of the globe are among 
the most natural to man. It is simply the institution of hypoth- 
eses that conflict with Eevelation, and not less so with science, 
to which objections can apply. Where any apparent collision 
of geological facts with the clear statements of the Mosaic Eec- 
ord may appear to exist, there should be no rash haste to cast 
them at Eevelation, but they should be held in reserve as either 
wanting in some other facts to disclose their proper import, or, 
at least, as possibly susceptible of a construction which shall not 
contradict what the Creator himself has clearly impressed with 
His authority; or, as in the case of the Deluge, what the Sav- 
iour of man has solemnly ratified. This is the rule in all the 
sciences where the received laws of nature appear to be contra- 
dicted. But here ambition has learned its lesson only after a 
severe experience. 

The most distinguishing characteristic of Theoretical Geology, 
and which has marked its career from the very beginning, is the 
shifting nature of its fundamental premises, and the vicissitudes 
and conflicts of hypotheses. Howard, in his "History of the 
Earth and Mankind" (1797), when reviewing this ground, re- 
marks that — 

" These pretended testimonies are insomuch more doubtful as 
their adducers disagree among themselves; and the jarring sys- 
tems hitherto substituted for the Mosaic Account, so far from ac- 
cording better with the laws of Nature, or being a clearer expli- 
cation of her past and present state, are generally founded on 
absurd or ideal hypotheses, and often in direct opposition to the 
most certain principles hitherto deduced from her." 

And such, as I have shown, particularly in Chapter TIL, is 
remarkably true of the present hypotheses of the development 
of living beings ; nor is the nebular theory less opposed to fun- 
damental facts and principles, as will be shown in Appendix I. 
And now the highest Authority in Geology shall tell us how 
little confidence is placed in the foundation upon which its pres- 



i 



422 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ent speculations repose — "We must not," says Sir Charles Lyell, 
"too hastily infer, from the absence of fossil bones of mammalia in 
the older rocks, that the highest class of vertebrated animals [the 
quadrumana] did not exist in the remote ages." This may be 
also regarded as a summary conclusion from the numerous in- 
stances of the highest order of animals whose fossil exuviae are 
found in low secondary rocks. It is of course fatal to the whole 
typical "system," overthrows "the peculiar feature and basis of 
modern geology," and contradicts Sir Charles's opinion, and as 
promulgated by many others, that the organization of the earliest 
geological animals was so far different from the now existing spe- 
cies as to require a condition of physical nature very different 
from the present. This conflict in fundamental principles grows 
out of the geological hypotheses of remodellings of the earth, an 
exalted temperature, and progressive developments of living be- 
ings from the lowest to the highest, and a neglect of the forego- 
ing exceptions. It only remains now to discover the bones of 
man fairly imbedded in deep fossiliferous rocks, or in the coal 
formations, to complete the argumentum ad hypothesem ; since 
Theoretical Geology concedes his comparatively recent appear- 
ance upon earth, inasmuch as his exuvise have not been found 
in that relation. Such a discovery, therefore, according to the 
geological hypothesis alone, will establish a corresponding date 
for the fossiliferous rocks ; while, as we have seen, there is am- 
ple proof that man's existence upon earth does not exceed the 
Scripture chronology. 

The Eev. Professor Hitchcock, in writing upon the General 
Deluge, has, also, a comprehensive statement, in which he shows 
the nature of the " Science," in what it consists, and the manner 
in which it is constructed. It goes with the rest in admonishing 
us to be satisfied with the facts, and to depend upon the Mosaic 
Narratives for the scientific principles which they underlie. Thus 
Dr. Hitchcock — 

" Theories of diluvial gravel, like all other ardent generaliza- 
tions of an advancing science, must be regarded but as the shift- 
ing hypotheses to be modified by every new fact, till at length they 
become accordant with all the phenomena of Nature." — Ameri- 
can Bibl. Repos., Jan. 7, 1837. 

Some time prior to the foregoing, another eminent Geologist, 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 423 

the Eev. Prof. Sedgwick, put forth the following admonition; 
and the reaction which had then commenced was soon followed 
by the abandonment of the "Beliquice Diluviance " by its Author. 
Says the Professor — "We [geologists] ought to have paused 
before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our 
old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood." — Anni- 
versary Address, &c, 1831. 

Nevertheless, Professor Sedgwick maintained that — " The Bi- 
ble instructs us that man and other living beings have been placed 
but a few years upon the earth; and the physical monuments of 
the world bear witness to the same truth." But at the same time 
he made the great mistake of yielding to the geological assump- 
tion of the slow formation of the earth, and was thus betrayed 
into a misstatement of the Mosaic Narrative, in saying that — 
"Between the first creation of the earth and that day in which 
it pleased God to place man upon it, who shall dare to define the in- 
terval f On this question SCRIPTURE IS SILENT." [! ] — Discourse on 
Studies at Cambridge, 1831. He has also, in the same Discourse, 
some very unreserved criticisms upon those writers who attempt 
geological problems without the requisite knowledge; and of 
this we have had something from our Author at page 361. 

We have seen that Theoretical Geology has proved itself a 
fabric of speculation by the constant fluctuations of its doctrines, 
although it has relieved itself of all restraint from Eevelation. 
A late exemplification of this is worthy of note, on account of the 
eminent source, and the long experience which is sacrificed to a 
visionary project. Sir Charles Lyell, according to Dr. Hooker, 
in his Address before the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science (1868), has led a life of geological delusions. 
Thus Dr. Hooker, the President — 

"Sir Charles Lyell, after having devoted whole chapters of the 
first editions of his Principles of Geology to establishing the exist- 
ence of special creations, abandons it on the tenth, mid this, too, on 
the showing of a pupil 1 ' [Mr. Darwin]. " I know of no brighter 
example of heroism, of its kind, than this, of an Author thus aban- 
doning, late in life, a theory which he had for forty years regarded 
as one of the foundation-stones of a work that had given him the 
highest position attainable among scientific writers :" 

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 



i 



424 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

But Sir Charles was not quite so abrupt in his transition ; for 
he manifested signs of a predisposition to Darwinism for some 
time antecedently to the "tenth, edition;" and had it not been 
for his influence, Darwin's work on the "Origin of Species" 
might have never seen the light ; for he states, in his work on 
the "Antiquity of Man" (1863), that— 

"Part of the Manuscript of his projected work was read to 
Dr. Hooker as early as 1844, and some of the principal results 
were communicated to me on several occasions. Dr. Hooker 
and I had repeatedly urged him to publish it without delay, but 
in vain, as he was always unwilling to interrupt the course of his 
investigations ;" and the work did not appear until 1859. Nev- 
ertheless (hcec olim meminisse juvabit), Sir Charles, after arguing 
in former days, in his Principles of Geology, against the doctrine 
of progressive development of living beings from some primor- 
dial form, goes on to remark, in regard to the recent appearance 
of man upon earth, that — 

" If the popular theory of the successive development of the 
animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most per- 
fect forms, rests on a very insecure foundation, it may be asked 
whether the recent origin of man lends any support to the same 
doctrine, or how far the influence of man may be considered as 
such a deviation from the analogy of the order of things previ- 
ously established, as to weaken our confidence in the uniformity 
of the course of nature. I need not dwell on the proofs of the low 
antiquity of our species, for it is not controverted by any experienced 
geologist. Indeed, the real difficulty consists in tracing bach the 
signs of man's existence on the earth to that comparatively mod- 
ern period when species now his contemporaries began to pre- 
dominate. It is never pretended that our race coexisted with the 
assemblages of animals and plants, of which, all or even a great 
part of the species are extinct." 

And yet Sir Charles has become an advocate, not only of the 
developmental hypothesis, but, as we have seen (Chapter XII. ), 
of the high antiquity of man — forming, indeed, one of the most 
impressive evidences of the utter instability of Theoretical Geol- 
ogy. It is worthy of remark, also, that Sir Charles has a good 
analysis of Lamarck's doctrine of progressive development, as 
we have seen in Chapter YIIL, which is essentially the same as 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 425 

Darwin's, and treats it with great severity — designating it as a 
"violent hypothesis," and regards as absurd Lamarck's notion 
that — 

"A small gelatinous body is transformed into an oak or an 
ape ; passing on at once to the last grand step in the progressive 
scheme, by which an Orang-outang, having been already evolved 
out of a monad, is made slowly to attain the attributes and dig- 
nity of man." "By virtue of the tendency of things to progress- 
ive improvement, the irrational was developed into the rational." 

And yet Sir Charles, after "forty years of opposition," has be- 
come a convert to exactly those doctrines. And farther, the fol- 
lowing summary denunciation of Lamarck's entire theory, and 
therefore of Darwinism, is as applicable now as when Sir Charles 
proclaimed it in behalf of Reason ; and, in connection with his 
own metamorphosis, it is a clear demonstration of the utter 
worthlessness of all such doctrines. Thus Sir Charles — 

"It is evident that, if some well- authenticated facts could have 
been adduced to establish one complete step in the process of 
transformation, such as the appearance in individuals descending 
from a common stock of a sense or organ entirely new, and a 
complete disappearance of some other enjoyed by their progeni- 
tors, time alone might then be supposed sufficient to bring about 
any amount of metamorphosis. The gratuitous assumption, there- 
fore, of a point so vital to the theory of transmutation teas unpardon- 
able on the part of its advocate." — Principles, &c. 

It will be in vain to urge any difference in principle between 
Lamarckism and Darwinism. Indeed, we have the direct author- 
ity of Sir Charles that he regarded Darwin's doctrine as only a 
modification of Lamarck's. Thus he saj^s, in his "Antiquity of 
Man," that— 

" The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Neander- 
thal [human] skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive devel- 
opment and transmutation, or on that modification of it by Mr. 
Darwin, consists in this," &c. 

But notwithstanding our Author had opposed the doctrine of 
development out of a simple primordial condition of organic mat- 
ter, he has been a thorough advocate of the spontaneity of living 
beings, and has ascribed their origin to the "Laws of Nature" 
much after the manner of the Duke of Argyll. Lamarck, and 



426 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Darwin, and Tiedemann, and Spencer, have even the advantage 
of beginning with some form of organic matter ; while Lyell and 
the Duke necessarily start with the simple elements of matter, 
which are detached from their inorganic compounds, and gath- 
ered together and organized under the influence of the "Laws 
of Nature." (See Chapters VII. and VIII.) This opinion of 
Sir Charles is important on account of his high authority in 
Theoretical Greology, as showing, by its abandonment for another 
scarcely less absurd, the baseless nature of the geological fabric, 
independently of our direct demonstrations. (See particularly 
Chapter VII.) Thus, for example, in our Author's work on the 
Principles of Geology — 

" I do not mean to call in question the soundness of the infer- 
ences of some botanists as to the former existence of certain limit- 
ed spots whence species of plants have been propagated, radia- 
ting, as it were, in all directions from a common centre. On the 
contrary, I conceive these phenomena to be the necessary conse- 
quences of the plan of nature before suggested, operating during the 
successive mutations of the surface." 

And as to the development of animals, he says that — " In re- 
gard to some of the more modern tertiary periods, the climate of 
Europe does not appear to have been of such a tropical character 
as may have been necessary for the development of the tribe of apes, 
monkeys, and allied genera." And again — "So far, then, as our 
present inquiries enable us to judge, there are strong indications 
that, during the periods of the Wealden, the Oolite, and Lias, 
there was a large development of the reptiles, at the expense, as it 
were, both of the cretaceous and terrestrial mammalia. It may 
be well, then, to inquire whether this difference in the state 
of animal life in the northern hemisphere at these remote 
periods is irreconcilable with the notion of the constancy and 
uniformity of the laws which govern the changes of the organic 
world." 

Our Authors work on Geology abounds with similar exam- 
ples ; and in the following we have one of the numerous in- 
stances of the manner in which spontaneity of being, or a devel- 
opment of living beings out of inorganic matter by the laws of 
nature, has been rendered acceptable under the disguise of a sin- 
gle word — created, or creator; and of which we have had other 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 427 

conspicuous examples before us, particularly in Chapter VIII. 
Thus our Author — 

"If the reader should infer, from the facts laid before him in 
the preceding chapters, that the successive extinctions of animals 
and plants may be part of the constant and regular course of na- 
ture, he will naturally inquire whether there are any means pro- 
vided for the repair of these losses? Is it a part of the economy of 
our system that the habitable globe should, to a certain extent, be- 
come depopulated both in the ocean and on the land; or that the 
variety of species should diminish until some new era arrives, 
when a neiv and extraordinary effort of creative energy is to be dis- 
played?" "Humboldt has characterized these subjects as among 
the mysteries which natural science can not reach ; and he ob- 
serves that the investigation of the origin of beings does not be- 
long to zoological or botanical geography. To geology, however, 
these topics do strictly appertain." 

And again Sir Charles says — "I have endeavored to show 
that the hypothesis of the gradual extinction of certain animals 
and plants, and the successive introduction o/netv species, was quite 
consistent with all that is known of the existing economy of 
the animate world." ! ! 

Our Author's imagination pursues this doctrine of spontaneous 
generation into its minutest details, far beyond what we have 
seen of the Duke of Argyll on Creative Law (Chapter VIII.), and 
which is so entirely estranged not only from the absolute exigen- 
cies of the Mosaic doctrine of Creation by a Personal God (see 
Chapter VII.), but that of creating altogether, which is the only 
one consistent with the Divine Character and Unity of Design, 
that it should be delivered in its ample force against the fabric 
of Theoretical Geology. Thus our Author, as to animals — 

" It may be safe to assume that, exclusive of the microscopic 
beings, there are between one and two millions of species now 
inhabiting the terraqueous globe ; so that if only one of these 
were to become extinct annually, and one new one were to be ev- 
ery year called into being, much more than a million of years 
might be required to bring about a complete revolution in organic 
life." 

Our Author even infuses the doctrine of spontaneity of living 
beings into his work on the "Antiquity of Man." Thus he says — 



428 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"While rejecting transmutation, I was equally opposed to the 
popular theory that creative power had diminished in energy, or 
that it had been in abeyance ever since man had entered upon the 
scene. That a renovating Force which had been in full operation 
for millions of years should cease to act, while the causes of extinc- 
tion were still in full activity, or even intensified by the acces- 
sion of man's destroying power, seemed to me in the highest 
degree improbable. The only point on which I doubted was, 
whether the Force might not be intermittent, instead of being, 
as Lamarck supposed, in ceaseless operation." That is Equiv- 
ocal or Spontaneous Generation, Pantheism, Atheism, and can 
mean nothing else. (See Chapters VII. and VIII. for a full dem- 
onstration.) 

Until quite recently, as we have seen, Sir Charles continued 
to sustain the " Theory of Progression," or the appearance of 
animals, in regular order, according to the complexities of organ- 
ization, from the lowest to the highest, and in equal pace with 
such as became extinct, in virtue of the "creative law of inor- 
ganic nature." He thus defines, in his "Antiquity of Man," the 
meaning of the geological phrase, " Theory of Progression " — 

"It supposes," he says (beginning * his exemplification with 
the vertebrate type), " a gradual elevation in grade of the verte- 
brate type, in the course of ages, from the most simple ichthyic 
form to that of the placental mammalia, and the coming upon 
the stage last in the order of time of the most anthropomorphous 
mammalia, followed by the human race — this last thus appearing 
AN integral part of the same continuous series of acts of devel- 
opment, one link in the same chain." 

As Darwin's doctrine of Natural Selection and Struggle for 
Existence does not recognize the " Theory of Progression," but 
inculcates the most accidental development of species out of each 
other, and in no systematic order, and as it is generally accepted 
by Geologists, the fossiliferous rocks, and the geological ages 
that have been founded upon them, must soon become an ex- 
ploded " Science." 

The Eev. Dr. Buckland's abandonment of the Noachian Flood 
should not be neglected in this connection. After writing a 
work of great ability, the "Reliquiae, Diluvianoe" to prove the oc- 
currence of a general deluge by its desolating effects, he suddenly 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 429 

abandoned this application of his laborious accumulation of facts, 
and contributed them towards the foundation of modern Theo- 
retical Geology, which had just taken its stand upon the "Med- 
als of the Kocks." In his Reliquiae Diluvianm (1823) he says that 
" The discoveries of modern geology prove to a demonstra- 
tion that there has been a recent universal inundation of the 
earth," and represents it as a violent rush of waters, tearing up 
the soil to a great depth, excavating valleys, and hurling masses 
of rocks, gravel, &c, over the face of the earth. And here it 
will be interesting to recall the principal incidents which led to 
his sudden rejection of the Mosaic Narrative of the Flood, and 
to thus appreciate more intelligibly the merits of the substituted 
hypotheses. It supplies, also, a good illustration of the hasty 
generalization so common in Theoretical Geology, and of the ra- 
pidity with which one hypothesis is abandoned for another, that 
is soon destined to a similar fate. This is farther conspicuously 
shown by the substitution of the "Glacial Theory" for the No- 
achian Flood soon after the events which are described in the 
following quotation. Indeed, the Glacial Theory was already in 
an embryo state, and must be regarded as a principal motive for 
crushing out the Narrative which had been supposed amply suf- 
ficient for explaining what the Glacial Theory was ambitious to 
take upon itself. Here is a sketch of the transition from the 
Noachian Flood to geological torrents of water, and thence to 
the glacial theory : 

"Influenced by some fresh discoveries," says Phillips, in his 
Geology, " and the growing importance of the study of modern 
causes in action, some of the eminent Geologists in England dis- 
sented totally from the views of Dr. Buckland, and declared, from 
the Chair of the Geological Society, their conviction that the dilu- 
vial deposits did not belong to the effects of one general flood." 

If we now turn to Dr. Buckland's Bridgewaier Treatise, we shall 
see what was the effect of this decision upon the principal pro- 
jector of the fossil basis of Theoretical Geology, and how readily 
he abandoned the Sacred Narrative. Thus — 

"The evidence which I have collected in my Reliquiae Diluvi- 
ance (1823) shows that one of the last great physical events that 
have affected the surface of the globe was a violent inunda- 
tion, which overwhelmed a great part of the northern hemi- 



430 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sphere, and that this event was followed by the sudden disap- 
pearance of a large number of the species of terrestrial quadrupeds. 
Discoveries which have been made since the publication of that 
work show that many of the animals therein described existed 
during more than one geological period preceding the catastrophe 
by which they were extirpated. Hence it seems more probable that 
the event in question was the last of the many geological revolu- 
tions that have been produced by violent irruptions of water rather 
them the comparatively tranquil movement described in the In- 
spired Narrative." 

About the same time Mr. Greenough, President of the Lon- 
don Geological Society, in his Anniversary Address, 1834, re- 
nounced his faith in the Mosaic Flood. He remarked that — 

" Some fourteen years ago I advanced an opinion [in his Geol- 
ogy], founded altogether ipon physical and geological considerations, 
that the entire earth had, at an unknown period, been covered by 
one general but temporary deluge. New data have flowed in [the 
glacial theory], and, with the frankness of one of my predecessors, 
I also record my recantation." 

It is also worthy of notice that Mr. Greenough, in speaking of 
Whiston's celebrated theory of the Deluge, which refers it to the 
attraction of the Comet of the supposed period of 575 years, on 
its passage near the earth, remarks that — 

" We need not be deterred from embracing that hypothesis un- 
der any apprehension that there is in it any thing extravagant or 
absurd." ! ! — Geology. 

I mention these things, however, among a multitude of others 
of a similar nature, for the purpose, mostly, of contrasting "the 
Science" with the Mosaic Narratives, and of indicating the na- 
ture of the former. 

And now, considering how little the existing evidences of a 
universal flood had attracted attention, or were even known, till 
brought before us by Cuvier, Conybeare, De Luc, and Buckland, 
it must be regarded as a demonstrative proof of the Inspiration, 
and of the literal sense of the Narrative which supplies a cause 
to which recent investigations had referred the universal superfi- 
cial drift, till Theoretical Geology assigned it to its " last violent 
irruption of water," and thence to the "Glacial Theory," since 
the writer himself of the Narrative could have had no knowl- 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 431 

edge whatever of the facts -upon which Theoretical Geology has 
founded its hypothesis. 

In regard to the Narrative of Creation, there were several em- 
inent Divines who wrote upon Geology about the time of Buck- 
land's Bridgewater Treatise, who conceded, for the benefit of The- 
oretical Geology, as Dr. Buckland expresses it, that — "Millions 
of millions of years may have occupied the indefinite interval be- 
tween the beginning in which God created the heaven and the 
earth, and the evening or commencement of the first day of the 
Mosaic Narrative." They generally left the Six Creative Days 
to their natural length, and admitted the creation of man and ani- 
mals as revealed. But the destructive force which was impending 
over this Narrative rested for a short time only in that long pri- 
meval darkness. The absence of light was not congenial to organ- 
ic life. Different modes of interpreting the fossils found imbed- 
ded in the rocks were allowed by Theological writers, according 
to the mutable speculations of Geologists. They generally placed 
the creations of the beings which they represent during the dark- 
ness of the supposed indefinite period between the "beginning" 
and the first of the Creative Days. And here it will be interest- 
ing, for the purpose of observing more fully the groundwork 
upon which geological "science" is founded, and some of the ex- 
traordinary fluctuations to which it has been rapidly subjected, 
to look a little farther at its leading premises. The concurrence 
of some of the principal Clergy appears to have operated as a 
complete justification of the perversion of the Mosaic Narratives; 
and to this I have already traced much of the decline of public 
faith in their Divine communication. It was every thing to The- 
oretical Geology that the Eev. Dr. Buckland fortified the "long 
indefinite period of darkness after the first verse" by the "Med- 
als of the Bocks," as he designated the fossils. But others had 
already opened the way to this license with Bevelation ; and 
thence, by an easy transition, to an invasion upon the Mosaic 
Days of Creation. The Bev. Dr. Chalmers, for example, allows 
the long period of darkness, and the most disorderly creations 
before the geological violations of the Six Creative Days. Here 
are his words: 

" Does Moses ever say that when God created the heavens and 
the earth, He did more at the time alluded to than transform 



432 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

them out of previously existing materials ? Or does he ever say 
that there was not an interval of many ages betwixt the first act 
of creation, described in the first verse of the book of Genesis, 
and said to have been performed in the beginning, and those 
more detailed operations, the account of which commences in the 
second verse, and which are described to us as having been per- 
formed in so many days? Or, finally, does he ever make us un- 
derstand that the generations of man went farther than to fix the 
antiquity of the species, and, of consequence, that they left the an- 
tiquity of the globe a free subject for the speculations of philosophers." 
— Evid. of Christ. Rev., in Edinburgh Encyclopedia. 

But suppose we unite the first and second verses, thus — "In 
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the 
earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the 
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of 
the waters." What a perplexing embarrassment ! Where is the 
interval ?* This authority of the Eev. Dr. has passed into many 
of the subsequent works on Theoretical Geology; and the "Sci- 
ence " appears to have taken rather an unfair advantage of his 
accommodating disposition, to which he had yielded under the 
assurance of a world of living beings anterior to the Mosaic 
Days. Hear his repentant words. In his Review of Cuvier's 
Theory of the Earth, in Christian Instructor, April, 1814, he protests 
in the following manner against geological liberties with the 
Bible: 

"You [Geologists] protest against the knife and demonstra- 
tions of the anatomist as instruments of no authority in your de- 
partment We protest, against the hammer of the mineralogist 
and the reveries of the geologian as instruments of no authority 
in ours. You think that Cuvier is very slender in geology, and 
that he has been most un philosophically rash in leaving his own 
province, and carrying his confident imaginations into a totally 
different field of inquiry. We can not say that you are very 
slender in the philosophy of history and historical evidences, for 
it is a ground you scarcely ever deign to touch uponP 

* It is true that attempts have been made, as lately by the Eev. Dr. Mollot, in 
his Geology, to explain away the force of the copulative conjunction between the first 
and second verses. But they are even farther strained than in the case of the word 
Day. 



THE MOSAIC NAKRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 433 

Taking, therefore, our Author's own premises, may we not re- 
tort them upon himself, and "protest" against the contributions 
of Theologians to the anti-Scriptural doctrines of Theoretical Ge- 
ology, as having no more propriety than the interference of the 
"hammer of the Mineralogist and the reveries of the Geologian" 
with the province of Divinity ? 

About the same time Bishop Glieg (in StacJcJiouse's Bible, 
1816), remarks of the fossils, that — "There is nothing in the 
Sacred Writings forbidding us to suppose that they are the ruins 
of a former earth, deposited in the chaotic mass of which Moses 
informed us that God formed the present system." 

But the Bishop, besides thus interpolating ) like Dr. Chalmers 
and many other Divines, upon the silence of Revelation, goes 
even farther than practical Geologists in advancing the scheme 
of a prehistoric earth. The Bishop's reasoning, however, is wor- 
thy of a place along with what we have seen of the more imme- 
diate branches of the "Science." lie has also been claimed by 
Theoretical Geology as a high authority, and his contributions, 
therefore, go with the rest in disclosing the nature of its founda- 
tions. 

" We learn," he says, " that after the present heaven and the 
present earth shall have passed away, a new heaven and a new 
earth shall succeed them. From this expression we gather that, 
though after the day of judgment the earth shall cease to be as it 
now is, the matter of which it is composed shall not be annihi- 
lated, but, being arranged into neiv order after a certain duration 
in chaos, shall give support to a new eace of inhabitants. 
Reasoning from this, again, by analogy, we conclude that it is at 
least probable that some such occurrence took place previous to the 
Mosaic Cosmogony." ! ! 

Although the Bishop was only a Theological Geologist, and, 
by his own admissions, derived his information from books alone, 
he should, nevertheless, have known that a prospective event can 
have no application in the way of analogy in showing even the 
possibility of a similar antecedent ; while, also, there is no inti- 
mation in Scripture of the existence of a former world. Bacon 
would have given this spurious philosophy a conspicuous place 
in his Novum Organum, had Theoretical Geology advanced as far 
at that era. 

28 



431 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

The Bishop has also other arguments of the same prospective 
analogical nature in behalf of a prehistoric earth ; such, for ex- 
ample, as the appearance of new stars which, he thinks, " may be 
the restoration to order of systems which had formerly been re- 
duced to chaos, and thereby rendered invisible." The distin- 
guished Bishop, however, although yielding much to " Science," 
protected the literal interpretation of the Mosaic Days "after the 
first verse," so that his authority has ceased to be useful to The- 
oretical Geology; and he qualified his remarks in regard to the 
fossil exuviae by saying — "If these things be, indeed, well ascer- 
tained, of which, however, I am by no means convinced" 

The Eev. Prof. Baden Powell, in his Connection of Natural 
and Divine Truth, argues in behalf of Theoretical Geology the 
doctrine of successive developments and extinctions in the fol- 
lowing emphatic manner : 

"From ill-informed, or too often prejudiced persons, we hear 
frequent remarks disparaging the inquiries and conclusions of 
the Geologist, while they allow and applaud the inferences of the 
Astronomer and the Chemist. Yet when the Geologist contends 
that the crust of the earth, with its organized productions, has been 
gradually brought into its present condition by a series of crea- 
tive changes going on through millions of ages, his conclusion is 
condemned as chimerical and dangerous." 

But that is not the greatest sacrifice made by this eminent Di- 
vine to the cause of Theoretical Geology. Its speculations led 
him to concede that the Narrative of Creation, including the 
Fourth Commandment, " Was not intended for an historical nar- 
rative ; and if the representation can not have been designed for 
literal history, it only remains to regard it as having been intended 
for the better enforcement of its objects in the language of figure 
and poetry [!], and to allow that the manner in which the Deity 
was pleased to reveal Himself to the Jews as accomplishing the 
work of creation was veiled in the guise of apologue and parable ; 
and that only a more striking representation of the greatness and 
majesty of the Divine Power and creative wisdom was intended 
by embodying the expression of them in the language of dramatic 
action" ! ! 

The Eev. W. D. Conybeare makes a similar sacrifice to Theo- 
retical Geology. He concedes (in Christian Observer, 1834), that 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 435 

"The very numerous successive series of organic remains im- 
bedded in the strata do undoubtedly appear to require periods 
of considerable duration." Bat no greater license for perverting 
the Narrative of Creation, as in the foregoing case of the Eev. 
Prof Powell, could be desired than what is granted by our Eev- 
erend Author, who says that " It is surely nowise inconsistent with 
the fullest reception of Eevelation to maintain that it professedly 
confines itself to the exposition of the dispensations of the great 
Creator, as they concern his final intellectual creation ; that, in a 
word, the Bible is exclusively the history of the dealings of God to- 
wards man. 11 That is to say, the Narrative of Creation speaks 
only of man; and as the foregoing remarks refer to that Eecord, 
there can scarcely be a greater misapprehension of its statements. 

The Eev. Dr. Hitchcock (in Biblical Recorder, Jan. 7, 1837) also 
conceded to Theoretical Geology a long interval after the "be- 
ginning," and agrees with the "Science" that the plants and an- 
imals of that epoch were differently organized from the present 
tenants of the earth ; as was supposed to be implied by its inex- 
pressible darkness. Thus he says : 

" It now appears that the fossil animals and plants are so differ- 
ent from existing races that they could not have been contemporaries ; 
so that we must seek in the undescribed interval between the ' be- 
ginning ' and the Six Days' work for the time when they had their 
existence, and regard the Scriptures as entirely silent concerning 
them, because their history could have no bearing upon the ob- 
jects of Eevelation." 

Nay, more — Theoretical Geology addresses itself, in the garb 
of Eeligion, to the confiding mind of the child, and carries its 
misrepresentations of the great facts relative to organic nature 
into our Primary Schools. Thus the Author last quoted — 
" Comparative Anatomy strengthens this presumption by 
showing conclusively that most of such animals as now in- 
habit the globe could not have lived when the same physical 
conditions existed that were necessary for the creatures found 
in the lower strata." ! ! — Eev. Dr. Hitchcock's Elementary Ge- 
ology, 1840. A similar statement is made in his Eeport on the 
Geology, Mineralogy, Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts (1833), 
where it is also said of that long period of darkness, that, as Mo- 
ses "leaves untouched an indefinite period of what may be called 



i 



436 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the semi-chaotic state of the globe, we shall find no difficulty in 
reconciling any apparent discrepancy. For during this long pe- 
riod all those creations which the strata now reveal may have 
taken place; and the animals and plants thus brought to light 
are of exactly the character which we should expect might exist IN A 
semi-chaotic condition of the globe." ! ! "During the long pe- 
riod above spoken of the globe was evidently preparing for the 
residence of Man, and the other animals that now inhabit it." 

Such is an exact representation of the knowledge of Theoret- 
ical Geology respecting comparative anatomy and of the exigen- 
cies of light to vegetation, till the late day when the discovery of 
the eyes of the Trilobite (" the first of created animals ") led to an 
immediate abandonment of the long period of darkness, and an 
assault upon the Six Creative Daj^s.* But ignorance of organic 
life should be no pretext for ingrafting error upon Eevelation, 
nor for violations of natural laws, and least of all for imputing 
absurdities to the Almighty in opposition to His explicit state- 
ments. 

At another time the Author just quoted virtually concedes the 
want of any just foundation for the doctrine of progressive devel- 
opment, whether in light or darkness, by attempting to sustain it 
by the most shallow of all hypotheses : " Suppose now," he says, 
" that Naturalists should find reason to conclude that new species 
of animals and plants do occasionally appear on the globe ; would 
there be any inconsistency between such a fact and the Scrip- 
tures?" — Hitchcock, in Biblical Recorder, January, 1838. 

* The Eev. Dr. Buckland was one of the first to recognize, in the Eyes of the 
Trilobite, the existence of light at the very dawn of Creation. As the discovery 
forms a very important crisis in Theoretical Geology and the Narrative of Creation, 
the reader will be interested with its history : 

" We must regard the eyes of the Trilobite," says the Eev. Dr. Buckland, in his 
Geology, "with feelings of no ordinary land, when we recollect that we have before 
us the identical instruments of vision through which the light of heaven was admit- 
ted to the sensorium of some of the first created inhabitants of our planet. The dis- 
covery of such instruments in so perfect a state of preservation is one of the most mar- 
vellous facts yet disclosed by geological researches ; and the structure of these eyes 
supplies an argument of high importance in connecting together the extreme points of 
the animal creation." "We do not find this instrument passing onward through a 
series of experimental changes from more simple into more complete forms. It was 
created at the very first in the fullness of perfect adaptation to the uses and condi- 
tions of the class of creatures to which this kind of eye has ever been, and is still ap- 
propriate." 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 437 

But the abandonment of the long period of darkness, and the 
subsequent invasion upon the Six Creative Days, has not modi- 
fied the anatomical and physiological doctrines of Theoretical 
Geology. It continues to equally warp them to its assumptions 
of " remodellings of the earth," "an universal tropical tempera- 
ture," "progressive developments," &c. Sir Charles Lyell, as 
we have seen, presents the existing aspect of geological philos- 
ophy ; and here is more from his work on the Principles, &c. : 

"As Geologists, we learn that it is not only the present condi- 
tion of the globe which has been suited to the accommodation of 
myriads of living creatures, but that many former states also have 
been adapted to the organization and habits of prior races of beings. 
The species, likewise, have changed ; and yet they have all been 
so modelled on types analogous to those of existing plants and an- 
imals as to indicate throughout a perfect harmony of design and unity 
of purposed 

The quotation shows, also, how a writer will contradict himself 
in the same sentence when he attempts to mingle the true with 
the false, since, if the present animals and plants are so similar to 
the most ancient " as to indicate throughout a perfect harmony 
of Design and Unity of Purpose" nothing can be more inconsist- 
ent than to assume that " many former states of the globe [by which 
is meant different physical conditions] have been adapted to the or- 
ganization and habits of prior races of beings" 

Strangely enough, the foregoing paragraph is a part of our 
Author's short defense against a charge of atheism alleged by "a 
friendly Critic ;" and how far he has averted this imputation will 
appear more clearly from the following remarks, in the same con- 
nection. Thus, as to " the past eternity of our planet " — 

" It has also been urged that, as we admit the creation of man 
to have occurred at a comparatively modern epoch — as we concede 
the astonishing fact of the first introduction of a moral and intellectual 
being — so, also, we may conceive the first creation of the planet it- 
self I am far from denying the weight of this reasoning from 
analogy ; but although it may strengthen our conviction that the 
present system of change has not gone on from eternity, it can 
not warrant us in presuming that ive shall be permitted to behold 
the signs of the earth? s origin, or the evidences of the first introduc- 
tion into it of organic beings." 



438 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

However innocent our Author may be of the charge of his 
"friendly Critic," that "the existing causes of change have op- 
erated with absolute uniformity from all eternity" (Quarterly Be- 
view, 1830), it can net be doubted that the manner of presenting 
the defense is calculated to instill the belief that the universal 
world is self-existent. 

In regard to our late reference to Comparative Anatomy, it 
should be said to the uninformed that it makes no distinction 
whatever between the animals and plants entombed in the low- 
est fossiliferous rocks and the analogous species of the present 
day, and that the former assure us that external nature in its 
relations to life was the same at the first appearance of living 
beings as at this nineteenth century. The assumptions to the 
contrary are in the highest degree discreditable to " the Science." 
(See Chapter VII.) But what settles the question is the present 
existence of animals and plants of the highest organization, that 
have descended from such as were supposed to have been ex- 
tinct, and whose exuvias are among the earliest " medals of the 
rocks;" and, what is very remarkable, Sir Charles Lyell, as we 
shall have seen, records the fact. But Theoretical Geology de- 
fies the fact even when announcing it. Thus, the Rev. Dr. Buck- 
land, in his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology (1836) — 

" With respect to the state of animal life during the deposition 
of the secondary strata, the condition of the globe seems not yet 
to have been sufficiently advanced in tranquillity to admit of 
general occupation by warm-blooded terrestrial Mammalia. The 
only terrestrial Mammalia yet discovered in any secondary stra- 
tum are the small marsupial quadrupeds allied to the Opossum." 

These marsupial quadrupeds, however, had not others been 
discovered under similar conditions, as we shall soon see there 
have been, are abundantly sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy 
of the whole geological hypothesis which has been arrayed 
against Organic Nature and the Narrative of Creation. And 
here is a fact from Sir Charles Lyell in his late work on the 
Antiquity of Man (1863), which goes with the rest in showing 
the fallacy of the " Theory of Progression," and therefore of the 
"Creative Law," and the worthless nature of "the basis" of 
Theoretical Geology. Thus — 

"As to the class Reptilia, some of the orders which prevailed 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 430 

when the secondary rocks were formed are confessedly much higher 
in their organization than any of the same class now living." And 
again — "For more than thirty -four years it has been a received 
opinion in palaeontology, that Reptiles had never existed before 
the Permian or Magnesian limestone period, when at length, in 
1844, this supposed barrier was thrown down, and Carbonifer- 
ous Reptiles, terrestrial and aquatic, of severed genera, were brought 
to light." 

As all such information is suppressed by late popular writers 
on Geology, the inquisitive reader will be interested with know- 
ing still farther the different phases of hopes and fears which 
have distinguished the speculations upon this momentous sub- 
ject within a few late years. Thus Brongniart says : 

" No one plant has been discovered in the transition rocks, and 
to which it is peculiar, that differs much from those found in the 
later series." — Tableau des Terrains, p. 291. 

And here is one of the ablest of the school : " The former 
opinion," he says, " that the early animals were exclusively sim- 
ple in their structure appears, therefore, no longer tenable." — 
Professor Silliman's Appendix to BahewelVs Geology, 1839. 

But the fossils would amount to nothing without assuming a 
succession of developments and extinctions, and it is hard to 
abandon them entirely ; so, therefore, we are told by the same 
Authority, that — 

"As creation advanced, higher orders of both animals and 
plants were called into being, while animals of simple structure 
are also continued to the present time. There was not, how- 
ever, an entire extinction of all the animals of a particular 
race," &c. 

Bakewell concedes that " The evidence from organic re- 
mains alone must ever be attended with uncertainty unless orig- 
inally confirmed by superposition. Animals whose remains are 
deposited in distant basins may be of different species ; but this 
does not prove that they did not live at the same period." 
"When the different periods of time shall he known in which 
different species of animals first appeared in different latitudes, 
then, and not till then, can we predicate with certainty respecting 
the relative age of strata from their organic remains alone." — 
Geology. 



440 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Our able Author has also occasional remarks in which he 
harmonizes with the Mosaic Narrative, as in the following quo- 
tation ; where will be seen also a discrepancy of opinion in The- 
oretical Geology upon the important subject before us, and that 
we adopt exactly the conclusions of our Author, who is reason- 
ing altogether against us. Thus, while employed in advocating 
the progressive development of animals, and remodellings of the 
globe, our Author reasons like ourselves : 

"Even those Geologists," he says, "who deny the progressive 
development of organic life admit that man is a recent inhabitant 
of the globe; but if, as they maintain, the essential conditions of 
the earth have been the same as at present during an indefinite 
series of ages ; if the same causes have always been in operation, 
without any increased intensity of action ; if the earth from the 
remotest imaginable epoch had islands and continents, rivers and 
seas, enjoying a similar temperature to the present, though 
placed in different latitudes; if such, I repeat, were from the re- 
motest epoch the condition of the globe, no assignable reason can 
he imagined why it might not have been inhabited by man.'''' 

To which I may add that, when the earth was adapted to 
the growth of plants, the laws which govern vegetation, and its 
physical agencies, assure us that the earth was then as well qual- 
ified for the abode of man and animals, and incomparably more 
so in the temperate climates than it is at this day in the arctic 
regions ; nor can this affirmation be in the least degree invali- 
dated. It is founded upon immutable facts and principles, and 
is alone subversive of the whole fabric of Theoretical Geolo£v. 
When the Science shall understand the intimate relations be- 
tween plants and animals in respect to their physiological con- 
ditions, and the close analogies which obtain as to physical agen- 
cies among all the members of the organic world, it will accede 
to the foregoing statement as readily as it did to the necessity of 
light to the earliest of animated beings on its discovery of the 
eyes of the Trilobite (p. 436). 

Another important fact, besides the multitude we have had 
before us, and others which will be urged, may be now stated as 
remarkably corroborative of the Mosaic Narrative, and such as is 
demanded by Divine consistency, that there has been but one 
Creation, and that one simultaneous throughout the Organic 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 411 

world. It is thus represented by Sir Charles Lyell in his Princi- 
ples of Geology : 

" From the remotest period there has been a coming in of new 
organic forms, and an extinction of those which pre-existed on 
the earth ; some species having endured for a longer, others for 
a shorter time ; while none have reappeared after once dying out." 

Now, in view of the multitude of species that have become 
extinct, and the greater number of analogous ones that still exist, 
it is sufficiently manifest that if there were any foundation for 
the creative law of nature, a solitary one, at least, of the extinct 
species should have reappeared. (See Chapter VII.) 

Hugh Miller admitted the usual geological developments 
and extinctions, but was just in time to escape " the ruins of a 
former earth " which was supposed to have existed " between the 
first and second verses of the Narrative of Creation." In his 
Testimony of the Rocks, he says that "The scheme of reconciliation 
with the Narrative of Creation, which was perfectly adequate in 
1814 [and in 1837], was found in 1839 to be no longer so." Bat 
great innovations have been subsequently made, so far as it re- 
spects the doctrine of developments and extinctions. There are 
however, some who dissent from the usual hypotheses. Thus the 
distinguished Professor Dana, of Yale College, in the Bibliotheca 
Sacra, 1856, maintained the doctrine of distinct and progressive 
creations, but regards the " typical plan " as extinct, and thus 
demolishes the fundamental basis of Theoretical Geology. 

" Species," he says, " have not been made out of species by 
any process of growth or development, for the transition forms 
do not occur ; the evolution or plan of progress was by successive 
creations of species, in their full perfection. After every evolu- 
tion, no imperfect or half-made forms occur ; no back step in cre- 
ation, but a step forward, through new forms, more elevated, in 
general, than those of earlier times ; the Creation was not in a lin- 
eal series from the very lowest upward. The types are wholly in- 
dependent, and are not connected lineally, either historically or 
zoologically. The earliest species of a class were often far from 
the very lowest, although among the inferior. In many cases 
the original or earliest group was but little inferior to those of 
later date," &c. 

The scene is thus continually and rapidly shifting, and is equiv- 



442 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

alent to an open avowal that the Scripture text is a worthless 
document, and is tolerated only till mankind shall become a little 
more accustomed to the shifts of Geology. Even the Eev. Dr. 
Thompson concedes, in his Man in Genesis and in Geology, that 
" the Science " is unreliable in its Divine relations. He remarks, 
that— 

" The history of Professor Owen's opinions illustrates the in- 
stability of scientific theories. Since the publication of his 'Pa- 
laeontology ' he has openly shifted his ground upon the doctrine 
of specific creation by the intervention of miraculous power. His rea- 
sons for reversing his judgment upon this point appear plausible, 
but no more so than were his earlier arguments upon the other 
side." 

We have seen that, to expound the origin of species by natu- 
ral laws, millions of years are now substituted for the Creative 
Days. What a contrast is here between the budding of the in- 
vasions upon the Sacred Eecord and the full-blown revolution! 
AH the disciples of the school were for a while contented with 
the first step in "accommodating the Narrative to geological 
facts." Having imagined a hiatus " between the first and second 
verses," they ventured upon assigning the organization of the 
earth, and a long succession of developments and extinctions of 
plants and animals, to the mystical agencies of that " long, indefi- 
nite period of darkness," and were generally opposed to any en- 
croachment upon the natural meaning of the Six Days of Cee- 
ation. " It is only a little sin, and my soul shall live." But 
like the habit which renders us insensible to greater ones, so 
have the perversions of the Narratives of Creation and the Flood 
advanced till their near obliteration is received by multitudes 
with absolute insensibility. Dr. Buckland, as we have seen, be- 
gan to suspect that the exigencies in Theoretical Geology would 
not be satisfied with the long " undefined period of darkness," 
and, besides his commentary on the eyes of the Trilobite (p. 436), 
has many ingenious remarks preparatory to its approaching aban- 
donment, and finally concludes with saying that — 

"Still, there is, I believe, no sound critical or theological ob- 
jection to the interpretation of the word Day as merely a long 
period; but there will be no necessity for such an extension in 
order to reconcile the text of Genesis with physical appearances, 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 443 

if it can be shown that the time indicated by the phenomena of 
Geology may be found in the undefined interval following the 
announcement of the first verse." — Bridgeivater Treatise on Geology. 

Here we have one of the earliest intimations of a serious de- 
sign to extend the Mosaic Days beyond their obvious meaning ; 
not that there is any thing in the language of the Eecord to jus- 
tify the perversion, but simply because it may be necessary to ac- 
commodate it to geological speculations. Indeed, it is amusing 
to observe the doubts and qualifications and labored efforts upon 
the word b^ (yom), with which the Creative Days were aban- 
doned to Theoretical Geology. All restraint, however, has now 
disappeared, although Yom continues to be a perplexing word, 
and of elaborate management, as, for example, in the work by 
the Kev. Dr. Molloy (Professor in the Eoyal College of St. Pat- 
rick), on Geology and Revelation (1870). A helping hand is 
thus, and in other ways, freely extended. The Reverend Au- 
thor just referred to, who grants all that Theoretical Geology 
can desire, contributes to " the Science " the following amend- 
ment of the Narrative of Creation : 

"We freely admit," he says, "that the hypothesis we have 
been defending would be of little use to account for geological 
phenomena, if it did not include the existence of light during the 
period of indefinite duration which we suppose to have elapsed 
between the first creation of the icorld and the zvorh of the Six Days. 
But in truth there is no difficulty in supposing that during such 
an interval Light may have prevailed upon the earth, and Air, 
and all the other conditions of organic life, pretty much as they do 
at the present day. Afterwards, at the close of the period, when 
perhaps ages innumerable had rolled by, this planet of ours 
would have appeared in that condition which is described in the 
second verse. Then the command of God would have gone forth 
— 'Let there be light; 1 and at once darkness would have been 
dispelled, a new era of existence commenced," and so on; being 
something after the manner of Bishop Glieg (p. 433). 

It will be useful to observe, for a moment, a very common 
method of preparing the way for any perversions of the Narra- 
tive of Creation, and for the introduction of which Theoretical 
Geology is much indebted to the Rev. Dr. Btjckland, who, in 
his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology, remarks that — 



444 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"After all, it should be recollected that the question is not re- 
specting the correctness of the Mosaic Narrative, but of our in- 
terpretation of it ; and still further should it be borne in mind 
that the object of this account was not to state in what manner, 
hut hy whom the world was made." 

Here, then, we find a platform early laid down by an eminent 
divine for employing the Narrative of Creation in any way that 
may suit the purposes of Theoretical Geology, so only a Creator 
be allowed to have been the Author of Nature. But the fore- 
going representation of the Narrative should not be left without 
comment. Our Author, and his long line of followers, should not 
be permitted to enjoy the advantages of his foregone conclusion, 
that " it was not an object of the account to state in what man- 
ner the world was made." On the contrary, as I shall have shown, 
it is everywhere just the contrary of this, and with an astonishing 
precision of detail. But let us now have a more specific method 
of demonstration. Is there nothing more, for example, conveyed 
by the expression — ''And God said, Let there be light, and there 
was light " — than that God was the Creator of light ? Does not 
the statement tell of the "manner," as well as "by whom," light 
was created ? Does it not tell us that it was not an emanation 
from chaos, no " correlation of forces " already in being, no chem- 
ical product, no mere " mode of motion," nor produced in any 
sense after the manner of man ? Does it not inform us of the man- 
ner of man's creation, of the materials, &c, and that a modified 
plan was pursued in regard to woman, and a reason assigned for 
the difference? and do we not here find the only "scientific" ac- 
count which can possibly be rendered of the institution for the 
propagation of the species, and the only ground for the marriage 
relation? Is there nothing of the "manner" about the endow- 
ment of the body with a Principle of Life and a Soul ? And so 
of the creation of plants before they were in the earth, and the 
reasons assigned for so doing — the " mist that went up and wa- 
tered the whole face of the ground" for the benefit of those crea- 
ted plants — the seeds that were also simultaneously placed in the 
ground, and, as we shall see, in wonderful harmony with the ex- 
igencies of the occasion — the creation of man and all the animal 
tribes out of the dust of the earth, &c. Is there nothing about 
all this that speaks of " the manner " of creating all things about 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 445 

which, man has any special interest, and in language best adapted 
to the general understanding of the human race? Can Theoret- 
ical Geology imagine that a more intelligible account of "the 
manner " could have been rendered by the Almighty himself? 
Equally, also, must it be allowed that every other specification in 
the Narrative is more perfectly imbued with "the manner" of 
the Creative Acts than can be conveyed by any modification of 
its language ; and this consideration forms a strong internal proof 
that the Eecord was divinely communicated, and intended to be 
received in its obvious meaning. Had the Narrative of Creation 
no other object than to state "by whom the world was made," 
such an object would have been accomplished by the statement 
in the first verse. And yet our Eeverend Author, while thus 
employed in opening the way for Theoretical Geology, expresses 
exactly our own conclusions in the following manner; and I shall 
therefore, quote extensively. This may be tedious to some, but 
it is necessary to a proper understanding of our subject. 

"The disappointment of those," says our Author, "who look 
for a detailed account of geological phenomena in the Bible rests 
on a gratuitous expectation of finding therein historical informa- 
tion respecting all the operations of the Creator in times and places 
with which the human race has no concern. As reasonably might 
we object that the Mosaic History is imperfect because it makes 
no specific mention of the satellites of Jupiter or of the rings 
of Saturn. We may fairly ask of those persons who consider 
physical science a fit subject for Eevelation what point they can 
imagine, short of a communication of Omniscience, at which such 
a Eevelation might have stopped, without imperfections of omis- 
sion, less in degree, but similar in kind to that which they impute 
to the existing Narrative of Moses. A revelation of so much 
only of Astronomy as was known to Copernicus would have 
seemed imperfect after the discoveries of Newton, and a revela- 
tion of the science of Newton would have appeared defective to 
Laplace. A revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the 
eighteenth century would have been as deficient in comparison 
with the information of the present day, as what is now known 
in this science will appear before the termination of another age. 
In the whole circle of the sciences there is not one to which this 
argument may not be extended, until we should require from 



446 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Eevelation a full development of all the mysterious agencies that 
uphold the mechanism of the material world." 

The exclusion of all the foregoing details from the Narrative 
of Creation, and its limitation to the great facts which form the 
basis of all the sciences, is one of the best proofs of its Divine or- 
igin ; nor can there be detected in any part of the Narrative, as I 
shall have shown, a single statement in conflict with the details 
of any science — for Geology is nothing but an assemblage of 
facts, and, as will appear, in harmony with the plain statements 
of the Narrative. When we come to an analysis of the order of 
Creation alone, without regarding the other internal proof of its 
Divine origin, we are amazed at the scientific harmony and Uni- 
ty of Design that pervades the whole — each, great system ar- 
ranged by itself, and in that exact order which science demands, 
but which science could not have determined till a recent day. 
How obvious, then, that the writer, unless recording the events 
exactly as delivered, and by one only Being who could have 
imparted the knowledge, would have confounded more or less 
the distinct systems — such as bringing together the creation of. 
plants and animals, or transposing the order ; and a single trans- 
position would have justified Theoretical Geology in all its inva- 
sions. Can a like perfection be affirmed of any other production 
in which the sciences are equally involved? I shall have shown 
that no human invention of the same complicated nature could 
withstand the ordeal of science. This, indeed, is sufficiently de- 
noted by the manner in which Science has attempted to impugn 
the Narrative ; and had it been in conformity with the teachings 
of Theoretical Geology, it would have everywhere violated the 
established facts and principles of Anatomy, Physiology, Chemis- 
try, and Astronomy. 

The object of the Author last quoted, in representing the Nar- 
rative as exempt from superfluities, was to supply a justification 
to Theoretical Geology in assuming successive developments of 
animals and plants, remodellings of the earth, &c, through mil- 
lions of ages, because the Narrative does not say that there had 
not been developments of living beings antecedently to the Mo- 
saic Days, nor inform us about the fossils of the rocks, nor spec- 
ify the number of hours of which the Mosaic Days consisted. 
As to the fossils, upon which Theoretical Geology has reared its 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. U7 

fabric, had the Narrative made any reference to them, it would 
have seriously violated the whole consistency of its plan. Those 
fossils form an integral part of what is affirmed as to the creation 
of animals and plants; and there would have been just as much 
propriety in describing all the species after having stated the 
general fact of their creation. 

It can not, however, be doubted that, had the Creator devised 
the incongruous and unmeaning system imputed to him by The- 
oretical Geology (so far as such a Being is supposed to be respon- 
sible for it, or to have had any connection with the History of 
Creation), He would have given some intimation of the fact when 
employed in dictating the history. It would, of course, have been 
within Divine knowledge that man would have had the same, if 
not greater, curiosity about the experimental types with which he 
is so intimately associated in organization and habits — far great- 
er, indeed, than would be his interest in the separation of the 
dry land from the water — and that in process of time he would 
come to observe those "records," or "medals," as Greology has 
it, in the bosom of his planet, and that, if the Narrative were re- 
ally deficient as it respects these " elementary types " of the hu- 
man race, and of the present animals and plants, for whom they 
are said to have served as " models," skepticism and infidelity 
would justly follow. And how truly is all this illustrated by 
Theoretical Greology ! As these premises, therefore, can not be 
invalidated, it follows conclusively, from the silence of the Eec- 
ord as to any creations antecedently to the Mosaic, that there had 
been none to reveal, and that the assumption, therefore, is anti- 
Scriptural. Indeed, as the Narrative professes that there was but 
one creation of living beings, had the Writer known that evi- 
dences of an antecedent creation were mingled with the latest, it 
would have been an act of deception, not only to have concealed 
a fact of such immediate interest to mankind, but to have con- 
veyed the belief that there had been one creation only. It is 
evident, therefore, that the greatest of all the invasions upon 
Eevelation is that of employing the reasonable silence of an in- 
spired writer upon topics relative to the events which he relates, 
for the purpose of discrediting his direct statements. 

It was prophetically said of the accommodating schemes of 
Dr. Buckland by an able contemporary, the Eev. John Fleming 



448 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

(whom the Bev. Dr. Hitchcock taunts, in the American Biblical 
M&pbsitory, January, 1837, with "an excitement of feeling"), 
that — 

"If the geological creed of Professor Buckland be established 
as true in Science, then must the Book of Genesis be blotted out 
of the Book of Inspiration." 

This, however, is not within the range of possibilities. The 
Narrative of Creation has provided against such, a contingency 
by its own irresistible proof of its immediate and verbal Bevela- 
tion by the Creator. Our interest lies, therefore, in protecting 
the ignorant, or credulous, or indifferent, against the anti-Scriptu- 
ral doctrines. The Bible will take care of itself. 

In the present chapter, and also in the eleventh, I have in- 
troduced many distinguished Theological Authorities in behalf 
of the encroachments upon the Narrative of Creation by Theo- 
retical Geology. The citations might be readily multiplied, and 
more willing advocates, like Bishop Colenso, could be intro- 
duced. But such as have been before us are sufficient to explain 
the unreserved disposition which has been made of the Narra- 
tives of Creation and the Flood, and its final culmination, at the 
Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Sci- 
ence in 1870, in the " emancipation of Science from Theology " 
(page 353). And here it is refreshing to avail myself of infor- 
mation embraced in an article by the Bev. Dr. John Hall, 
which appeared in the New York Evangelist of December 16, 
1869. The Bev. Dr. thus approaches Theoretical Geology with 
a weapon of its own providing in his hands: 

"It has been assumed by Geologists that chalk formation is 
altogether a thing of the past, and necessarily implies time, as 
well as a temperature widely remote from those of the sandstone 
formation. Put two surfaces — sandstone and chalk — together, 
and your Geologist will tell you that both were under the sea, 
and that they were formed at periods enormously remote. But 
these gentlemen tell us that the formation of both is going on at 
this present time, side by side, in spots of ten miles' width, and 
that, could we lift into upper air a section of such sea-bottom to- 
day, geologists would be bound on all the principles they have 
counted settled, to pronounce one part immensely older than the 
other, though they were both in course of formation, side by side, 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 449 

yesterday. Accordingly, it is reported to the Eoyal Society 
within the last month — ' Wherever similar conditions are found 
upon the dry land of the present day, it had been supposed that 
the high and the low temperature, the formation of chalk and 
the formation of sandstone, must have been separated from each 
other by long periods, and the discovery that they may actually 
coexist upon adjacent surfaces has done no less than strike at the 
very root of many of the customary assumptions with regard to geo- 
logical time.' 1 Just so, Lyell's Uniformitarian theory has been 
consigned to the receptacle of dishonest weights and measures, if 
there be, as there ought to be, a limbus for such. And now an- 
other accepted standard is branded as worthless, or ivorse. Let us 
hope the modesty of all true science will be promoted by these 
discoveries. 

"It used to be accepted as settled that animal life in the sea 
ceased at a depth of three hundred fathoms. Mr. James Forbes, 
indeed, counted upon finding it lower, on a scale proportioned in 
some degree to the decrease of life with increasing height of 
land. But last summer H. M. S. Porcupine carried out a series of 
investigations with dredging apparatus never before equalled, 
and which searched the sea-bottom surface five hundred fathoms 
deeper than that from which the first Atlantic cable was fished 
up. The dredge, weighing nine or ten hundred pounds, was 
worked to the depth of 2435 fathoms, and found ' an extraordi- 
nary abundance of animal life at the bottom of even the deepest 
ocean abysses.' ' Creatures of high organization, with perfect eyes, ,' 
mollusks of over a hundred species, silicious sponges, annilids 
and crustaceans are there, and endless ' animal life actively en- 
gaged in chalk formation,' not having the fear of the Geologists 
before their eyes ! If Mr. Barnum offered to the American pub- 
lic a living Mammoth ; or if a Plesiosaurus appeared in Broad- 
way, there are many persons competent to show, on scientific 
grounds, that neither had any business to be there, the last of the 
race having died and been buried in glacial deposits, or other- 
wise, many millenniums ago. So it had been established re- 
garding a pretty little Crinoid (stone-lily), of which you may see 
engravings in books on Palaeontology, and of which the last rep- 
resentative, called by the name of Bourgueticrinus, disappeared 
among the chalk masses in the days when oolite was being 

29 



450 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

made. But, behold ! M. Sars, a Swedish explorer, brings up a 
living specimen of this class. Many thanks to the little chalk- 
maker! It led to further searching, to deeper dredging, and let 
us hope also to deeper thinking. It shows that ' there are more 
things ' in the sea, at least, than Geology has dreamed of; it 
shows that science may be all wrong when it thinks itself most 
right; and that it is no wisdom, but consummate folly, to bate one 
jot of our confidence in Inspired Writ because scientific men in- 
sinuate its unreliableness, and suggest, with a pile of ill-classified 
fossils before them, that the tables of stone contradict the Kecord 
that claims the inspiration of God." 

A highly interesting account, by Dr. ¥i. B. Carpenter, of 
the recent deep-sea explorations by the British " Lightning" and 
"Porcupine" expeditions, read before the "Boyal Institution of 
Great Britain " (February 11, 1870), enlarges our knowledge of 
animal life as it exists in abundance at the depth of three miles, 
and at a temperature of 2J° Fahr. below the freezing-point of 
fresh water, and under a pressure of nearly three tons for every 
square inch. But the discovery which now interests us is 'the 
following : 

" The dredging operations have added largely to the number 
of cases in which types that had been regarded as characteristic of 
earlier geological periods, and to have heen long since extinct, prove to 
he still existing in the depths of the ocean [as I ventured to predict 
in my former work on "Theoretical Geology "] ; and greatly in- 
crease the probability that an extension of the like method of 
research to more distant localities would produce even more re- 
markable revelations of this character." 

The application of the foregoing discoveries to the fossiliferous 
rocks and to the whole "typical system of successive develop- 
ments and extinctions " is obvious enough, and will render serv- 
ice when I come to the interpretation of the earthy strata in the 
coal-formations in Appendix III. 

In my " .Theoretical Geology," 1856, occurs the following re- 
mark upon the subject now before us : " The narrow researches 
of Geologists, especially as it regards the ocean, in no respect 
qualify them to pronounce the extinction of even a comparative- 
ly few of the animal or vegetable tribes. This is conspicuously 
shown in the inability of Botanists, who are more indefatigable 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 451 

than Geologists, to ascertain the sources of many things which 
are open to observation throughout extensive regions of the 
earth. The tree which produces myrrh, a substance in universal 
use, mentioned in the Old Testament, and an article of commerce 
more than 3500 years ago, remained unknown till a single spec- 
imen was obtained in 1825. The true asafoetida plant, although 
its gum-resin has been in use for many centuries, has been only 
lately ascertained. Nothing is known of the plant yielding sag- 
apenum, although its gum-resin has belonged to the Materia Med- 
ica ever since the days of Hippocrates. The same is also true 
of galbanum and the plant which yields it. Colombo, a vegetable 
tonic in general use and high esteem for nearly two centuries, 
was supposed to come from Colombo, in Ceylon, till 1830, when 
Dr. Hooker ascertained that it is the produce of Mozambique, at 
an opposite point of the earth. But I will not multiply these ex- 
amples. They are sufficient to show how lean must be the re- 
searches of Geologists under the ocean and beneath the surface 
of the earth." Sir Charles Lyell, and other Geologists, as we 
have seen, and shall continue to see, abound with admissions to 
this effect. Here is one from Lyell very apposite to our present 
purpose. Thus — 

"I shall simply express my own conviction that we are still 
on the mere threshold of our inquiries, and that, as in the last fifty 
years, so in the next half century, we shall be called upon repeat- 
edly to modify our first opinions respecting the range in time of the 
various classes of fossil vertebrata. It would, therefore, be pre- 
mature to generalize at present on the non-existence, OR even 
the SCARCITY OF vertebrata, lohether terrestrial or aquatic, at pe- 
riods of high antiquity, as the Silurian and Cambrian" — which are 
the oldest fossiliferous rocks, and include the Trilobite (p. 436). — 
Lyell's Elementary Geology, 1851. And again he says, still for- 
getting himself — " If doubts and obscurities still remain, they 
should be ascribed to our limited acquaintance with the laws of 
Nature, not to revolutions in her economy. They should stimulate 
us to further researches, not tempt us to indulge our fancies in 
framing imaginary systems for the government of infant luorlds" — 
Principles of Geology. 

It is stated by Dr. Mantell that an Indian arrow-head was 
found beneath the leg-bones of the skeleton of the Mastodon 



452 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Oliiensis or Giganteus, now in the British. Museum, and four sim- 
ilar weapons were imbedded in the same stratum. If this state- 
ment be reliable, it would divest Theoretical Geology of one of 
its important proofs of the high antiquity of man, since these 
arrow-heads are clearly the work of the ancestors of the present 
North American Indians. (See Chapter XII.) But the Vir- 
ginia specimen, with its stomach preserved and filled with plants 
like those growing around it, and protruding above the surface 
of the ground, is equivalent to a living specimen, and has not 
yet received its proper consideration, either from Theoretical Ge- 
ology or from the Showman of scarcely less notoriety and delu- 
sive assumptions, to whom Dr. Hall refers in the foregoing quo- 
tation. But more than that, and not less disregarded by Theo- 
retical Geology, it is stated by the eminent Geologist, Bake well, 
that — 

" We have remains of the Elephant (existing species) occur- 
ring in a formation more ancient than the age of the Mastodons. 
Such instances should lead us to receive the evidence from ani- 
mal remains alone with great caution. Indeed, there is good rea- 
son to believe that in North America the age of the Mastodons was 
continued to nearly the present epoch, if the animal be not still 
living in some of the unexplored recesses of that vast continent." 
Sir Chaeles Lyell also remarks, in his Antiquity of Man, that 
— " We can scarcely doubt that the Mastodon in North America 
lived down to a period when the Mammoth coexisted with Man 
in Europe," and from which, in part, he infers the antiquity of 
the human race. (Chapter XII.) 

Again, Dr. Buckland remarks, in his Bridgewater Geology, 
that — "Discoveries demonstrate the constancy of the laws of coexist- 
ence that have ever pervaded all animated nature, and place these 
extinct genera in close connection with the living orders of Mam- 
malia." In exemplification of this coexistence, he states that ex- 
tinct genera of Pachydermata, such as the Palseotherium, Ano- 
plotherium, &c, are found in the gypsum of the Paris basin along 
with those of the existing genera of carnivorous, marsupial, ro- 
dential, and reptilian animals. 

And thus, also, Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the Rocks — 
"Although the Northern Mammoth, the Northern Hippopotamus, 
two Northern species of Khinoceros, the Cave-hyena, the Cave- 



THE MOSAIC NARRATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 453 

tiger, and the Cave-bear, have all ceased to exist, we know that 
the descendants of some of their feebler contemporaries, such as the 
Badger, the Fox, the Wild-cat, and the red Deer, still live amidst 
our hills and brakes. And for many ages must those extinct an- 
imals and the old extinct Elephant have roamed amidst our own 
familiar trees." " Of a still more ancient period, represented by 
the Eed Crag, seventy out of every hundred species of shells still 
exist." 

Now I reiterate that any one of the foregoing exceptions to 
the geological order of developments and extinctions (and, as will 
be seen, there are many others that go back to the earliest fossil- 
iferous rocks) is sufficient to overturn the whole geological fab- 
ric; and this, too, upon the ground of its own admitted basis. 
Sir Charles Lyell, and other Geologists, as we have seen, bear 
testimony to the same facts. And it is this accumulation of 
proof derived from Theoretical Geology which seems to be nec- 
essary to overpower the assumptions by which it is so entirely 
regardless of the contradictory facts. Here, also, is an interest- 
ing item from Hugh Miller, which looks like some correspond- 
ence with the Mosaic Narrative of Creation : 

"It is a great fact now fully established in the course of geolog- 
ical discovery, that between the plants which in the present time 
cover the earth, and the animals which inhabit it, and the animals 
and plants of the later extinct creations, there occurred no break 
or blank, but that, on the contrary, many of the existing organisms 
were contemporary during the morning of their being with, many 
of the extinct ones during the evening of theirs. We know, fur- 
ther, that several, even of the wild animals which continue to 
survive amidst our tracts of hill and forest, were in existence MANY 

AGES ERE THE HUMAN RACE BEGAN." 

Here is another statement by Buckland, which is all that can 
be desired in defense of our position: "It appears," he says, 
"that the Conifers are common to fossiliferous strata of all pe- 
riods. They are least abundant in the Transition series, more 
common in Secondary, and most frequent in the Tertiary series. 
Hence we learn that there has been no time since the commence- 
ment of terrestrial vegetation on the surface of our globe in which 
large coniferous trees did not exist. But our present evidence is 
insufficient to ascertain with accuracy the proportions they bore 



454 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

to the relative numbers of other families of plants, in each of the 
successive geological epochs, which are connected with our own by a 
new and beautiful series of links, derived /rom one of the most im- 
portant tribes of the vegetable IdngdomP " These discoveries are 
highly important, as they afford examples among the earliest re- 
mains of vegetable life of identity in minute details of in- 
ternal ORGANIZATION between the most ancient trees of the prime- 
val forests of our globe and some of the largest living Coniferae." 
— Bridgewater Treatise on Geology. 

Our Author has also, as we have seen, analogous facts in rela- 
tion to animals, to which the following may be added: "In the 
museum at Milan I have seen a large part of the skeleton of a 
Rhinoceros from the Sub- Alpine formation, having oyster-shells at- 
tached to many of its bones in such a manner as to show that the 
skeleton must have remained undisturbed for a considerable time 
at the bottom of the sea." — Ibid. 

Citations of the foregoing nature might be greatly multiplied. 
But, from what we have now seen of the admitted facts in Geol- 
ogy, it appears abundantly that its speculations as to the antiq- 
uity of the earth and its inhabitants, its system of progressive de- 
velopments, &c, have in reality no foundation whatever. The 
basis upon which the whole fabric reposes — the exuviae of ex- 
tinct animals and plants — is shown by Geology itself to have no 
such existence as is required by the various details of its theoret- 
ical conclusions. But independently of the foregoing admissions, 
if, as I have demonstrated beyond any contradiction, the entire 
system of spontaneity of living beings, starting with the elements 
of matter, and including Darwinism, Spencerism, Buchnerism, 
and all analogous doctrines, is totally false, we should infer with 
certainty, a priori, that the whole fabric of Theoretical Geology, 
for which the developmental hypothesis was invented, is equally 
false. (See Chapter VII.) 

Darwinism, and the other so - called " New Sciences" which 
discard Revelation, would not have advanced beyond their old 
i foundations had not the Sacred Narratives of Creation and of 
the Flood been so perverted to meet the speculations in Geology 
that the former is regarded, at best, as a vague tradition, and the 
latter simply as a myth. But these Narratives must be met by 
those of their opponents who have any regard for conflicting 



THE MOSAIC NAEEATIVES, GEOLOGY, ETC. 455 

evidence ; particularly the Narrative of Creation. That of the 
general Deluge is not much of an obstacle to the "New Sci- 
ences," and is dismissed as unworthy of consideration. But the 
former is a competing system of Cosmogony; and if it be the 
offspring of a mind upon which Science had not yet dawned, it 
is remarkable that it is in no respect contradictory, as is gener- 
ally assumed to be, of established principles in the various Sci- 
ences, nor of any proper interpretation of geological facts; but, 
on the contrary, it embraces, as I endeavored to show in my 
former work, an outline of a perfect system of the most compre- 
hensive philosophy. That Eevelation of Creation, which was 
vouchsafed to man in the midst of Egyptian darkness, will 
therefore be again summoned to our aid in the next following 
Chapter. (See, also, Appendices.) 



456 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ANALYSIS OF THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION. — ITS INTERNAL 
PROOF ESTABLISHES THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL, AND ITS 
OWN LITERAL MEANING THROUGHOUT. 

In the present chapter it is my purpose to show demonstra- 
tively that the Narrative of Creation abounds with internal 
proof of its Divine communication to man ; and this being es- 
tablished, we shall have obtained a full confirmation of my dem- 
onstration of the substantive existence of a Soul, and equally, 
also, of a Principle of Life. As this is a primary object of the 
analysis, we will first have before us the premises in relation to 
the Soul. Thus we read that — 

" God said, Let Us make man in Our Image, after Our Like- 
ness. And God created man in His Own Image. In the Im- 
age of God created He him." 

An affirmation four times repeated, and with the emphasis of 
an immediate succession, apparently to protect the statement 
against the assaults of the coming adversary. 

Again, in the second chapter, or that of details, we are told 
that — "The Image of God" means a "Soul," and, moreover, 
that the forces of inorganic nature were not adequate for organic 
beings, and that they must not be confounded with the Principle 
of Life. Here is the sublime and expressive announcement (al- 
though some quarrel with the language), in twenty-seven words 
— seventeen in Hebrew : 

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and 
breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life ; and man be- 
came a Living Soul." 

' Animals were equally endowed with the Principle or Breath 
of Life ; but man is distinguished from them as having besides a 
living Soul Here, then, both a Soul and a Principle of Life are 
taught by an Authority from which there is no appeal — so only 
the Authority be acknowledged. Here was no agency of the 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 457 

chemical or physical forces. The whole plan was perfectly dis- 
tinct from that of inorganic matter. The fabric of the new being 
had no analogies with the former, and his phenomena were all 
distinct and without a semblance to any thing that existed before 
the beginning of vegetable life. This in itself supplies an irre- 
sistible proof that new forces (or the same as designed for ani- 
mals and plants) were created for the government of his organi- 
zation, and to constitute the essence of his life. But, as if to 
convey a full and distinct impression that man is not the crea- 
ture of the physical forces, nor amenable to their operation, the 
inspired writer, after informing us that all the varieties of or- 
ganization were direct and specific acts of God, and thus contra- 
distinguishing organic from inorganic matter, proceeds to state 
the manner in which Life was imparted to the miraculous fabric 
of man simultaneously with a Soul. Lucid brevity is a sublime 
characteristic of the Account of Creation ; and hence the com- 
pact phraseology — "He breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
Life, and man became a living Soul." It was enough, also, that 
the details of man's creation should be stated, to enable the great- 
est skeptic to understand that the same Life which appertains to 
animals and plants was also a distinct creation. Man was taken 
as an example of information on this subject, being the most 
perfect of created organisms. The analogies among all their vi- 
tal phenomena, and the equal disappearance of those phenomena 
after death, are so perfectly plain, that none can doubt the iden- 
tity of the forces upon which they depend (especially among 
animals), or that they came into existence by analogous acts of 
their Creator. But we have, however, in relation to animals, 
the same statement of their formation out of the earth as in the 
case of man ; the Author of the revelation seeming little disposed 
to leave any ground to the unbeliever. It is true, there is noth- 
ing said, as in the case of man, as to the successive steps observed 
in their creation. But it is just so in regard to woman, of whose 
creation there is nothing said in the way of repetition ; the gen- 
eral plan having been indicated in the account of man. It is 
said, however, that she was made out of a rib of man, as this 
was a distinct circumstance. Man is also connected with animals 
by Instinct, as well as by other analogies not less remarkable ; 
and the Principle of Unity of Design is carried out, as we shall 



458 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

see, in a wonderful manner in respect to the vegetable king- 
dom. 

Again, had the forces of inorganic matter been adequate to 
carry on the operations of organized beings, man would have 
been a living body before the act of "breathing into his nostrils," 
or, in language divested of a highly expressive metaphor, before 
the act of creating his living essence. The physical forces, al- 
ready existing, would not have been created anew for the special 
use of organized matter. This reasoning is only in conformity 
with the admitted fact that the Almighty does nothing superflu- 
ously, nothing that is useless. The Vital force of man, then, 
came into existence with his Soul, as did that of animals along 
with Instinct. And, pursuing the descending analogy, we come 
to simple organic life as manifested in the vegetable world, 
where it is modified in conformity with the peculiar economy of 
plants. The analogy, however, is very remarkable, as we have 
seen, between the functions of plants and animals. 

If, then, as we shall have shown from Eevelation, after sub- 
stantiating its literal meaning throughout, as well as by a variety 
of demonstrations (see Chapter VII.), that a Principle of Life 
was a direct act of Creative Power, how much more obvious is it 
that the statement in relation to Life is a corroborating proof 
that a Soul, which is far more distinguished by its peculiar phe- 
nomena, and whose existence and self-acting nature is more de- 
monstrable, was the simultaneous work of the same Almighty 
Power. 

And how, in the benighted times of Moses, could the greatest 
of all improbabilities have been surmised, that — "The Lord God 
formed man of the dust of the ground" — a fact, indeed, which 
has been known only since organic chemistry applied its analy- 
sis in very recent times. 

What I have now appropriated from the Narrative of Creation 
is conceded in a qualified manner by one of the latest advocates 
of the doctrine of the correlation or equivalence of the physical 
and vital forces, Dr. H. Bence Jones, in his Croonian Lectures 
for 1868, on Matter and Force — 

" If the Book of Genesis," says Dr. Jones, " be a revelation of 
physical science by the Almighty to man, then the existence of 
vital force separate from the full-formed body is true, and must 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 459 

be believed ; but if this Book, so far as regards science, repre- 
sents only the existing state of knowledge at the time it was writ- 
ten, as is shown by the facts mentioned in it contradicting the rev- 
elation which the Almighty has made in His works, then, what- 
ever may be the interest we feel in the earliest record of scientific 
knowledge, still, it can not be allowed to possess any scientific 
authority in determining what is the true relation of matter and 
vital force." 

Nothing here, however, about the Soul; but if the "Vital 
Force " be taught by the Narrative, then certainly the Soul like- 
wise. I demur, also, to the qualification — " If the Book of Gene- 
sis be a revelation of physical science," &c. ; for, although that 
may not have been in the least its object, it may, nevertheless, as 
I shall endeavor to show, present a perfectly scientific account of 
Creation; while, also, it will have been variously seen, there are 
no "facts mentioned in it contradicting the revelation which the 
Almighty has made in His works." If such, indeed, were the 
case, then the Narrative of Creation could not have been prompt- 
ed by the Almighty, but was simply the deceptive work of an 
uninformed man. Dr. Jones, however, proceeds to invalidate the 
Narrative in -the following manner : 

" The contradictions between the Book of Genesis (that is, the 
Narrative of Creation) and the revelation given in God's works, 
are seen in the statement — 1st, that day and night existed before 
the sun was made ; 2d, that darkness was as much an entity as 
light; 3d, that the moon had a light of its own like the sun; 
4th, that the firmament divided the waters from the waters — in 
other words, that there was water compared to the sea above the 
heavens ; and 5th, in the particulars regarding the order and 
time of creation of inorganic and organic things." 

If the foregoing objections can be shown to be without founda- 
tion, then must the Narrative of Creation come out triumphantly 
against "Modern Science," and in full testimony of its own ema- 
nation from Omniscience. But the reader will not lose sight of 
the fact that I have already, in the foregoing chapters, very ex- 
tensively and demonstratively placed Eevelation in the right, 
and " Science " badly in the wrong. I now come to a verbal 
examination of the Narrative, and to a critical consideration of 
the objections alleged. 



460 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

In the first place, then, "Science" has done great injustice to 
the Narrative in affirming that it violates gravitation, and its own 
consistency as to light, and the succession of night and day from 
the outset, in stating that the sun was not created till the fourth 
day; since its creation is embraced in the statement that the 
whole universe was brought into existence on the evening or 
beginning of the first day, though all in an immature condition. 
And how could even a writer of such an account, acting upon his 
own judgment alone, have made the blunder of introducing a suc- 
cession of light and darkness as forming the periods of the first 
three days, and in harmony with the remaining three, and then 
immediately contradict himself by affirming that there was no 
sun until the fourth day ! But, as we shall see, a magnificent 
Unity of Design has here been interpreted to the discredit of the 
Narrative, and to Science as well. 

As to darkness, it is no more declared to be an " entity " than 
it is by the scientific of the nineteenth century. Throughout the 
Narrative, the only meaning intended to be implied is the ab- 
sence of light. Nor is it said, or intimated, that the moon shines 
by its own independent light, but simply what every impartial 
observer must concede to be the fact. 

The wits of a multitude of able men have been exercised over 
the plain statements embraced in the first and second verses of 
the Narrative, until they have made them appear very obscure 
to their readers; and for this, as we have shown extensively, 
Theoretical Geology is responsible. Let us see farther: 

11 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' 1 '' Can a 
better account of the general fact of Creation be imagined, or a 
more sublime introduction to the Holy Scriptures? There the 
Narrative might have ended ; for it comprehends every thing in 
heaven and on the earth. But for man's reasonable gratifica- 
tion, and doubtless, also, to protect him against fallacious specu- 
lations, the Creator informs him of the condition of the Universe 
when so created, and of all the important facts relative to the 
globe he inhabits, and in wonderful consistency — nothing more. 
The Creator first informs us that when the earth was launched 
into being — "it ivas without form, and void f 1 that it was in a cha- 
otic state, and remained without an inhabitant till the third day. 
"Darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 461 

moved upon the face of the waters.' 1 ' 1 Here is a direct affirmation 
that the earth was in a state of aqueous solution; and on the 
third day this is reaffirmed — "And God said, Let the waters under 
the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land 
appear. And God called the dry land earth ; and the gathering to- 
gether of the waters called he seas." This original condition of 
the earth in a state of aqueous solution is proven, as I have dem- 
onstrated, by all the primary rocks ; which attest, also, the direct 
instrumentality of the Creator, in connection with the properties 
and laws He had impressed upon matter in organizing the earth, 
and which is clearly affirmed by the statement that — " The Spir- 
it of God moved upon the face of the waters," as well as by the 
more direct statements. (See Appendix I.) This will rescue the 
Narrative from the conflicting " nebular hypothesis," and prove 
another evidence of its Divine communication, and that it is in- 
comparably more scientific than the cosmogonies of its compet- 
itors. 

Had the general announcement in the first verse been want- 
ing, and the writer had begun with the earth alone, it would 
have implied a violation of the universal law of gravitation, or 
have thrown, at least, an obscurity upon the work of the fourth 
day, which could have been cleared up only by that philosophy 
of Design which it is my purpose to indicate. And yet it would 
have been a most probable mistake for an uninspired writer at 
that age of ignorance in astronomy, and especially on account of 
his limitation of all his details to the earth and its inhabitants, to 
have assumed that the earth alone was created " in the begin- 
ning ;" nor is the indispensable importance of the first verse even 
now appreciated, either in its philosophical bearings, or as indi- 
cating the " evening " of the first day. The question as to the 
supposed "long indefinite period after the beginning," and be- 
fore the creation of light, as well as the prolongation of the Six 
Days, has been considered in the thirteenth chapter in its rela- 
tions to Theoretical Geology, as well as its abstract merits ; but 
it must necessarily engage our attention in our more direct inter- 
pretation of the Narrative. 

I may now say that the word "created" means simply to 
bring into being, without any reference to the condition in which 
the objects were produced, and it applies as well to the several 



462 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

successive steps in the completion of the earth as to the primary 
creative act, and therefore equally so to all other orbs. The 
analogy which is supplied by the whole series of creative acts in 
regard to the earth, even of man, enforces the conclusion that 
the other planets, and the sun, and moon, and stars, were, like 
the earth, produced in a chaotic state ; as we shall also find to 
have been indispensable to Unity of Design in other respects. 

In the same general and sublime language we are told that the 
Creator entered, in Propria Persona, upon the work of reducing 
chaos into those systems of Design which make up the philoso- 
phy of all the sciences. " The Spirit of God moved upon the face 
of the waters." If that expression mean any thing, it is that 
Creative Energy was still in operation after the earth was created 
without form, and void of living beings; while, also, if it be al- 
lowed that a Creator subsequently supplied the " void" then, by 
the soundest logic, He was not less concerned in reducing the 
earth itself from its chaotic state, and which we shall find to be 
fully attested by the constitution of the primary rocks ; and thus 
also multiply the internal proof of the Divine origin and literal 
meaning of the Narrative. But the inspired writer informs us 
very circumstantially of its intended meaning throughout the 
Narrative, and in a manner which demonstrates its inspiration. 

And " God said, Let there be light, and there was light" Could 
it have been better or more intelligibly stated? It was, as it 
should have been, the first thing done in the progressive system- 
atic work after bringing the earth into being. Its action, espe- 
cially that of heat, is exerted as well upon inorganic matter as 
upon organic beings ; and there was the unfinished sun, which 
may well be supposed to have been endowed in its chaotic state 
with a principal means of fulfilling its great purposes. But there 
would have been no perfect diffusion of light until the creation 
of the "firmament," or refracting atmosphere, on the second day, 
and the completion of the sun on the fourth day. It makes no 
difference in regard to the indispensable necessity of the sun to 
the existence of what the act of creating light implies, whatever 
theory of light be adopted — whether the undulatory, or shining 
by its own light, or "a mere mode of motion." And thus, al- 
though there could have been no refraction and dispersion of 
light on the first day by an atmosphere, the revolution of the 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 4G3 

earth upon its axis removes those stumbling-blocks, that " God 
divided the light from the darkness," calling one of them " day" 
and the other " night," and which was farther defined, both as to 
nature and duration, by the pronunciation that u The evening and 
the morning were the first day" and so on till the great luminary 
was ..completed on the fourth day. And how critically exact is 
the prefixing of the " evening," and maintainiug this harmonious 
relation to " morning" throughout the Six Days. 

Here is Philosophy in the midst of primeval darkness ! All 
hut the sun on the wrong day, the complainant answers ; though 
some, like the distinguished Professor Jameson, strangely sup- 
pose, as he expresses it, that " the earth was during the epoch of 
the fourth day finally brought into its present orbit." What a 
contrast with the symmetry of the Narrative! And although 
these Philosophers insist upon the greatest latitude in regard to 
the interpretation of words, when it suits the purposes of specu- 
lation, yet in other instances, and for the same objects, as with 
the word "made" they maintain its literal meaning, although 
in violation not only of the laws of gravitation, and of obvious 
Design, but of the whole context of the Sacred Narrative. 
Thus, again, Prof. Jameson, in Edinburgh Journal, vol. xxv. : 

"A careful examination of the first chapter of Genesis itself 
leads unavoidably to the conclusion that our natural day of one 
revolution of the earth can not be meant by it, for we find that no 
fewer than three of the six days had passed before the measure 
of our present day was established. It was only on the fourth 
day, or epoch of Creation, that ' God made two great lights,'" &c. 

Another interpretation supposes the equal absurdity that light 
was created on the first day independently of the sun, and was 
gathered up and put into that orb on the fourth day. Thus the 
Eev. Mr. MacDonald, in his " Creation and Fall," 1856— 

"The fourth day is occupied with regulating the light created 
on the first day — collecting it into the heavenly orbs, which are 
henceforth to illumine the earth." 

And all this belongs to "Modern Science." But it will be 
seen that it is the deficient in science, and the dissatisfied, and 
not the Author of Nature, who have made the blunder. Moses 
had no knowledge of the nature of light excepting that it is 
emitted by the sun ; and the absurdity of the explanation just 



464 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

quoted from MacDonald assures us that the writer of the Narra- 
tive intended to be understood that the sun and the whole uni- 
verse of orbs were called into being simultaneously. And all 
this of a general nature being sufficiently implied, the absence 
of farther detail is an intrinsic proof of the Divine source of the 
information. 

There was a dispute in the early Jewish Schools as to whether 
the heavens were created before the earth, growing out of the cir- 
cumstance that the former is mentioned first. In the second cen- 
tury, however, it was generally considered settled, in conformity 
with the laws of gravitation, by Biblical authority. This was 
clue to a right translation of Isaiah xlviii. 13, by Simeon ben Ja- 
chai. Thus — " Mine hand also laid the foundation of the earth, 
and the palm of my right hand hath spanned the heavens ; when 
I called unto them they arose together" — Manasseh 1 s Conciliator. 

Since, however, the work of Creation was progressive and ex- 
actly systematic throughout the Six Days, had it been said par- 
ticularly that the sun was " made " on the first daj^, it would have 
implied that it was finished on that day, and thus have fatally vi- 
olated Unity of Design, since that orb was intended to subserve 
the uses of the planets and the vegetable and animal tribes. The 
planets, therefore, were completed first ; nor should the sun have 
been brought into maturity until required by vegetable life. 
And so, also, by analogy, of the stars. And as the moon was, 
like the sun, intended for the uses of the earth, it would equally 
have violated Unity of Design to have placed its completion on 
any other than the fourth day, and when, also, the sun was pre- 
pared to bestow upon it its full measure of light. And here, it 
should be observed, is a \ r ery critical proof, like that of the sun, 
of the Eevelation of the Narrative, and in its most literal sense; 
for it can not be doubted that an uninspired writer would have 
placed the completion of the earth's satellite on the day of the 
earth itself. 

The order of Design would have also failed in a fundamental 
point had the completion of the sun been any longer delayed ; 
since the introduction of plants rendered its perfection necessary 
at that exact juncture of time. And so, also, of the moon in its 
subordinate relations to the earth. And thus we see displayed 
the exquisite nature of that Science (so constantly denied to 



I 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 4G5 

God's direct Kevelation) which, established, "in the beginning," 
those laws of gravitation which were to govern the heavenly 
orbs, and provided light for all the wants of the earth up to the 
fourth day, and in delaying the completion of an act which was 
to answer only a subordinate part to the worlds of our system 
when they should be finished and ready for their living tenants. 
Moreover, it will be seen, when we come to our demonstration 
in Appendix I. that the earth was created in a state of aqueous 
solution, that all which is affirmed of its subsequent organiza- 
tion is impressed upon its whole condition. 

Our supposed violations of Design would have fatally wound- 
ed the credibility of the Narrative as soon as philosophy should 
have come to its analysis. Or, had an uninspired writer made 
the blunder of implying that the first verse was only a general 
affirmation without any special reference to the subsequent de- 
tails, as assumed by Theoretical Geology, and of delaying the 
creation of the sun until the fourth day, and have thus violated 
the exigencies of gravitation, as well as of "night and day," and 
of "darkness" and "light," and of "evening" and "morning," 
he would not have added the flagrant improbability to his story 
of creating light on the first day, since it would have appeared to 
him not only totally unnecessary, but even absurd, till the sun 
was brought into being. Or, again, in having introduced light 
on the first day, he would unquestionably have provided the sun 
along with it in a state of perfection. The foregoing statement, 
I say, could not have proceeded from any other source but In- 
spiration, in view particularly of the fact that nothing is said spe- 
cifically of the sun till the fourth day ; since it will not be doubt- 
ed that an uninspired writer of that age would have followed the 
dictates of his senses, and have either introduced the sun along 
with light, or have delayed them both till the fourth day. And 
yet it is equally certain that he would not have made the appar- 
ent blunder of instituting a regular succession of "light" and 
"darkness" for three consecutive days, designating one as "clay" 
and "morning" and the other as "night" and "evening" and 
have delayed the appearance of the sun until the fourth day, and 
then have rendered his statement still farther improbable by af- 
firming that the sun and moon were created " to divide the day 
from the night" and for signs and for seasons, and for days and 

30 



4:06 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

years." But the creation of light at the particular juncture when 
it was commanded to appear was indispensable to the philosophy 
of Design, on account of the common relations of light to the Uni- 
verse, as well as for other specific reasons which will appear in 
the sequel. Nor can any philosophical mind fail of perceiving 
an evidence of Infinite Wisdom in having associated this com- 
prehensive act, this creation of an all-pervading principle, with 
the universal display of Omnipotence which appears in the first 
verse, and thus harmoniously, Divinely concluding the work of 
the first day, as a perfect systematic whole. The statements, 
therefore, thus far confirm themselves upon philosophical grounds, 
and through their contrast with improbabilities. 

But more remains to be said of the sun to complete the climax 
of Divine Philosophy. That the subsidiary orb should not have 
been finished at the time of its creation, nor until the fourth day, 
not only follows from the foregoing premises, but was absolutely 
required by the order of Design as disclosed in the analogy pre- 
sented by the earth. As the creation of the latter was progress- 
ive, and the former only subordinate and according to the prog- 
ress of the earth, so, also, should w r e have inferred, from the anal- 
ogy supplied by the earth as well as by the final causes of the 
sun, that this orb was alike a progressive work, had Eevelation 
been silent upon the subject; and had it been otherwise stated 
or implied, Theological Geology might have triumphed even 
more than now over the blunder. But as the Record states the 
fact in the first verse, and confirms it on the fourth day, it is an 
indisputable internal proof of its Divine authenticity. And thus 
we might go on multiplying proof of the same nature upon this 
particular invalidation of the Narrative ; as, for example, it is an- 
other proof to the same effect that nothing is said as to whether 
any thing was done to the sun on the second and third days (and 
the order of Design assures us there was not), or what was the 
condition of the sun when first brought into being, as this is 
wholly uninteresting to man, and as the sun is merely subordi- 
nate to the planetary system. If, also, the sun existed in an un- 
finished state on the first day, and was completed on the fourth, 
according to our demonstration, there w T as just as much truth 
and propriety in the language employed on the latter day as 
there was in describing the organization of the earth on the third 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 467 

day. Nay, more ; for while the circumstantial account of the 
creative progress of the earth is in exact correspondence with 
man's interest in the globe he inhabits, the account of the sun 
and moon, and of their uses, is, upon the same principle, precisely 
all that should have been communicated; and the laconic "stars 
also " is inexpressibly significant of the same Divinely graduated 
measure of information, according to man's relations to the sev- 
eral orbs respectively. And yet the solar system probably bears 
no greater relation to the systems of stars than a grain of sand to 
the earth. Observe, now, the contrast in details as they relate to 
the third and fourth days, and how abundantly full is the infor- 
mation of the fourth day's work : 

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the 
heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for 
signs, and for seasons, and for clays, and years; and let them 
be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon 
the earth : and it was so. And God made two great lights ; the 
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the 
night. He made the stars also" 

But while a philosophical silence is observed in regard to the 
details of creation that relate to the sun, moon, and stars, a stu- 
pendous philosophy is projected, with all the necessary outlines, 
for the exercise of reason in these discoveries which, when most 
latent, supply an impressive demonstration of the attributes of 
the Being who has thus hidden himself behind his own works. 

Here, also, we find this writer, when the infancy of Science 
had scarcely begun, inculcating the most profound philosophy as 
to the immense superiority of the earth over the sun, and that 
the latter is merely subordinate to the uses of the earth ; when, 
on the contrary, an uninspired writer would not only have made 
the glorious luminary the special work of his first day, but 
would have given to it that transcendent importance over the 
objects of the earth which is even now very generally ascribed 
to it. 

Again : the analogy supplied by the earth leads to the neces- 
sary conclusion that the organization of the primary planets was 
carried on pari passu with that of the earth ; while the same 
philosophy which assigns the completion of the earth's moon to 
the fourth day, refers the moons of all the primaries to that day. 



468 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

And here, also, the same consistency obtains that we have seen 
of the communications relative to the earth, sun, and moon, ac- 
cording to man's immediate interest in one or the other; since, 
as all the planets and their satellites, excepting the earth and 
moon, have no greater relation to man than the stars, and are 
lost in the immensity of the latter, nothing whatever is said 
about them. And yet Eevelation, through the analogies sup- 
plied by the earth and its moon, enables Keason to deduce the 
creative history of all the other planets and satellites. The sev- 
eral primaries and their moons form, therefore, two distinct sys- 
tems, as they stand in the work of Creation ; and since the earth's 
moon and other satellites sustain, like the sun, a subordinate rela- 
tion to their primaries, they should have belonged to the same 
creative system as the sun and stars, and therefore have employ- 
ed the Creator at the same time in a work so analogous in all its 
subsidiary parts. This, too, is evident from the unity and har- 
mony of Design which is manifested in the remarkable individ- 
uality, and according to their special final causes, of all other dis- 
tinct parts of the symmetrical whole. The same consistency of 
Design should be carried, also, to all the orbs from the analogies 
supplied by the creation of plants, and man, and animals, in a 
state of maturity, and according to their philosophical relations 
in the system of Design, and the different steps which were ob- 
served in the process of organic creation, and thus supply an- 
other proof of the literal meaning of the Narrative. Finally, I 
may present the language of the Narrative as apparently corrob- 
orating its own statements and what philosophy enforces, for — 
" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts 
of them." 

We have now seen that there "are many very remarkable 
points in the statement concerning the fourth day, and in its re- 
lations to the rest, upon either of which the soundest uninspired 
philosopher would have made the mistake, at least, of antici- 
pating the order of Design. This, indeed, has been long and 
strongly evinced by the objection alleged against the Eecord, of 
having misplaced the sun and moon. But, to an uninspired 
writer, at the dawn of knowledge, there is scarcely any part of 
the account of Creation which would not have appeared far more 
improbable than to the enlightened of our own times ; and who 



THE NARRATIVE OE CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 469 

will doubt that the most sagacious astronomer, with all the ex- 
isting knowledge in geology and physiology impressed upon his 
mind, if employed in writing his own views of what should have 
been the narrative of Creation, would produce a scheme in which 
it would be difficult to perceive an outline of the Divine ac- 
count ? 

But it has not been always exactly so. Indeed, it is remarka- 
ble with what accuracy this subject was considered by learned 
Jews in the twelfth century, as shown by the following quotation 
from an Author of the seventeenth century, and of whose work I 
had no knowledge when my interpretation of the Narrative of 
Creation appeared originally in my Treatise on Theoretical Ge- 
ology (1856), and as presented in the present work without mod- 
ification. The Author about to be quoted is endeavoring to rec- 
oncile the statement in the 4th verse — "And it was evening and' it 
was morning, One Day," with the statements in the 14th and 19th 
verses — "And God said, Let there be lights" &c, "And it was even- 
ing and it was morning, the Fourth Day." Among other early ex- 
pounders, who had nothing in view but a faithful account of the 
Narrative, he quotes several as having rendered the following 
interpretation : 

"Maimonides (born 1181), in his 'Guide,' Eashi (1030), and 
Aben Ezra (1119) in their 'Commentaries,' held that the light 
of the first day was that of the sun itself, which, revolving in its 
sphere from west to east and from east to west, made a day of 
24 hours. The Scripture saying that it was created on the Fourth 
Dag is incident to its thus demonstrating its effects upon plants, 
which appeared on the Third Day ; rain, which proceeds from 
the exhalations and vapors raised from the earth by the action 
of the sun's heat thereon, being necessary to their vegetation. 
Therefore, it is clear that there was no new creation on the Fourth 
Day; but the heat implies that on that day the sun developed 
the effects of his heat on plants. 

" Dion, De Diei Nom., says the first light was the sun itself; but 
on the First Day was not complete, having the illuminating prop- 
erty in common, but subsequently a fixed and special virtue for 
particular purposes given to it. 

" Isaiah, also (chap, xxx., verse 26), treating on a future age, 
says — ' Tlie light of the sun shall be seven times the light of the Seven 



470 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Days 1 — that is, of the Days of Creation, indicating that all the 
Seven Days had the same light." — Manasseh's Conciliator. 

Having now disposed of the important objection to the Narra- 
tive that relates to the sun and moon, I return to the beginning 
to look at the details relative to the globe about which alone man- 
kind have any special interest ; and here, in consideration of that 
interest, Eevelation has been as ample as it is philosophically ex- 
clusive in respect to other globes ; and this, therefore, I mark in 
behalf of the inspiration and literal meaning of the Narrative. 
I proceed, then, to inquire as to what, in the Philosophy of De- 
sign, should have been the next act of Creative Energy after the 
introduction of light. Certainly, the production of the firmament 
or atmosphere. That was indispensable to unity and harmony 
of Design in a very comprehensive sense. And here I will make 
the important remark, in farther exemplification of Unity of De- 
sign, that as fast as Creation advanced, the materials produced, 
and the forces or properties and laws impressed upon them, were 
rendered subservient, in connection with Creative Energy, in the 
farther acts of Creation so far as they were applicable. This will 
be shown to be the case with the properties impressed upon the 
component materials of the earth when Creative Energy brought 
the constituents from their state of solution into a solid con- 
dition ; and so far the process was rendered conformable to such 
as were to obtain independently of Creative Power. (See Ap- 
pendix I.) The same remarks are applicable also to the Flood ; 
though in regard to this catastrophe comparatively little of Mirac- 
ulous Power was interposed. (See Appendices II. and III.) 

As to the '' -Firmament" or Atmosphere, its creation was next 
in order after the creation of light — first, to stamp clotun or beat 
doivn (according to the exact meaning of the original word) the 
vapors which, by a law relating to their elasticity, enshrouded 
the earth ; secondly, to refract the light more completely ; and 
thirdly, to be ready for vegetation, besides less important imme- 
diate uses. It need not be said in what sublime harmony is all 
this ; though to appreciate it in all its vast relations requires 
some knowledge of the laws of evaporation, of atmospheric press- 
ure, and of optics, in their connection with the subject. In great 
correspondence, too, with the import of the word firmament is the 
word "divided" which, in the Hebrew, b-»iaa, means, to separate. 



THE NARRATIVE OE CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 471 

And as there was necessarily a .voluminous mass of vapor sur- 
rounding the globe prior to the creation of atmospheric air, this 
shows how critically exact is that other expression of "waters 
above the firmament. 11 All this, too, is a matter which has always 
been neglected or misapprehended, as we have seen in a quota- 
tion from Dr. Jones's Croonian Lectures (page 459). Least of all 
would the writer have known any thing of their philosophy, and 
therefore would have been entirely silent not only as to the 
waters above the firmament, but the firmament or atmosphere 
itself, had not the facts been divinely communicated. Indeed, 
Halley's theory that the evaporation of water depends upon a 
chemical union of vapor with the air, prevailed until Dalton 
showed that vapor is not only formed where there is no atmos- 
pheric air, but instantly formed on removing the pressure of the 
latter, and as instantly ' : stamped down" on restoring the press- 
ure. That the writer of the Narrative, therefore, should have 
stated the fact that there were waters above the earth is one of 
the numerous internal proofs of its inspiration which, establish its 
exact meaning in conformity with the plain import of the state- 
ments, and presents, as in all else we shall have seen, an impress- 
ive contrast with the efforts which have been made to crush this 
stupendous philosophy. Nor should we neglect, as a farther in- 
ternal proof, the manner in which the atmosphere is made a spe- 
cial act of creation and revelation ; for nothing can be more man- 
ifest than that such an invisible, intangible part of nature, and 
about which, indeed, the writer could have had very little knowl- 
edge, would have had no place in an uninspired narrative, while 
its omission would have left an invalidating: hiatus. 

The creation of the atmosphere, therefore, stands alone in its 
vast relations to the earth and its inhabitants, and should not 
only have preceded the earth's organization, but, by the same 
unity and harmony of Design that we have seen of the work of 
the first day, it should have occupied another entire day ; since, 
in constituting a grand symmetrical whole in itself, the writer 
would have made a palpable confusion had he blended its crea- 
tion with the work of the third day, which embraces totally dis- 
tinct, but harmonious subjects. God called it both " firmament" 
and "heaven ;" and as there is nothing else unaccounted for, and 
from its effect in "dividing the waters," it must necessarily have 



472 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

been the earth's atmosphere. And this is also farther substan- 
tiated by the clear definition which is rendered by the expres- 
sion — " and fowl that may fly in the open firmament of heaven." 

As a matter of course, the organization of the earth follows 
next in the order of Design ; but as this will form an extended 
subject of analysis in Appendix L, I dismiss it for the present 
and proceed to simply indicate the philosophy of Design in the 
creation of the vegetable kingdom as soon as the earth was in a 
condition to receive it, and when, also, light and atmospheric 
air were ready to take it in charge. Moreover, it was indispen- 
sable to unity and harmony of Design that the vegetable king- 
dom should have been produced on the third day, since there 
would have been a violation of Design in blending it with the 
totally distinct and systematic whole of the fourth day, and since, 
also, the vegetable tribes were philosophically and virtually in- 
dispensable to the existence of the animal kingdom. 

It is quite unnecessary to carry our analysis into the fifth and 
sixth days of Creation, as enough has been already said of their 
relations to the antecedent days, and as they readily follow also 
the rule of interpretation which I have endeavored to establish. 
All the acts are in exact philosophical order in their prospective 
relations to each other. But there is something here in respect 
to harmony and unity of Design which is peculiarly impressive. 
I refer to the creation of aquatic animals and of the feathered 
race on the fifth Day, and land animals and man on the sixth 
Day. The former, in a great system of Creative Design, should 
have been produced simultaneously, and distinctly from all other 
work, on account of the peculiarities of their habits, and the 
analogy which subsists between the water and the atmosphere in 
respect to their fluidity, and their distinction in that and other 
obvious conditions from the solid earth ; while, for a correspond- 
ing reason, land animals and man should have been associated 
in another special part of Design. No small proportion of the 
feathered tribes are also connected with water in their natural 
habits. Another minute circumstance may be seen in the crit- 
ical manner in which the anterior creation of animals is placed 
in its proper relation to man's. The Design throughout this re- 
markable detail of the events of the fifth and sixth days is palpa- 
ble, and evidently could not have been projected by an unin- 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 473 

spirecl writer. Neither could the statement of so improbable a 
circumstance that man was made out of the dust of the ground, 
and by analogy animals and plants also, have been of human 
invention. Until the recent days of chemical analysis, it would 
have been naturally supposed that the component materials of 
living beings were as perfectly unique as light is distinct from 
the earth, had Scripture been silent upon the subject. Again, 
what but a direct revelation could have enabled the penman to 
assign the creation of man near to his own era ; since he could 
not have deduced it from any uninspired history of the human 
race, nor from other memorials. Had the Mosaic Genealogy 
carried back the creation of man as far only as fifteen thousand 
years from our 19th century, it would have been contradicted 
not only by the earliest memorials, and the scanty population of 
the earth three thousand years ago, but by the rapid progress of 
the arts and sciences as soon as the foundation was laid. (See 
Chapter XII., on the Antiquity of Man.) And }^et how great 
the probability, as we may learn from our own propensities, that 
an uninspired writer would have placed the creation of man in a 
remote past, instead of within less than three thousand years of 
his own time ! And what a stupendous internal proof is sup- 
plied, in other respects, by that Genealogij, in enabling man to 
trace up his lineal descent to his first ancestor ! Here is the 
great final cause of that Genealogy; nor would the advocates 
of Darwinism surrender it, whatever their pretensions. What a 
restless being man would have been without the ability to assure 
himself, or to relieve his skepticism, by a reference to the Rec- 
ord of the origin of his race, or even his relations in time to the 
globe which he inhabits ! To know and remember the past is 
an innate disposition that distinguishes man from the brute; 
and since it has been implanted by the Creator, it can not be 
doubted that He would have provided some history of the most 
interesting of all temporal subjects, both in consideration of the 
innate desire and as supplying an unbroken succession of eras 
along which the mind travels backward in estimating the prog- 
ress of civilization and knowledge. It would have been, there- 
fore, an obvious defect in Eevelation had this information been 
withheld. And who does not see that if mankind had been left 
without this information, Theoretical Geology would have sue- 



474 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

cessfullj placed at defiance not only all the facts that go to dem- 
onstrate the very recent creation of the human race, but, in its 
propensity for speculation, would have involved the whole race 
in the appalling vortex of spontaneity of being and a soulless ex- 
istence ! (Chapters VIL, VIIL, XII.) Give to Theoretical Ge- 
ology its " long indefinite epochs," the peculiar charm which 
links us in close alliance with the Creator is broken. We should 
be separated by an abyss of time as incomprehensible as eterni- 
ty, or liable, at least, to its assurance by the contingency, at any 
moment, of the discovery of a human bone in the low fossilifer- 
ous rocks or in the coal-formations. We should be utterly lost 
in the confusion of "creations and extinctions," or ready to sur- 
render to the developmental hypotheses which begin with the 
elements of matter or a self-existent primordial form or cell. 
Then it might be pronounced with greater justification that — 
" organic nature is the mystery of mysteries." We turn to the 
Eecorcl, and there only do we find relief from the harassing 
doubts and anxieties which Theoretical Geology has engendered ; 
excepting, indeed, the corresponding assurance which is derived 
from the monumental records of the last four thousand years. 
And since, also, the writer of Genesis has accurately announced, 
by common admission, the recent creation of man, it must be 
conceded that this remarkable statement renders it in the highest 
degree probable that he is equally correct in his genealogy of 
the antediluvian group. Nor can this be disturbed should it be 
established that sharp-eyed critics have detected unimportant er- 
rors in subsequent genealogies that may have crept in in the in- 
fancy of writing. And here I may notice the remarkable coinci- 
dences in the references which are made to " the generations of the 
heavens and of the earth in the day that the Lord God created the 
earth and the heavens " and " the generations of Adam, in the day 
that God created man in the likeness of God, 11 and which contribute 
to each other a mutual support. The objects were analogous as 
it respects the chains of connection ; and while " the generations 
of the heavens and of the earth" are presented according to the 
exact periods of time in which each part was brought into be- 
ing, "the generations of Adam" are defined with a precision 
which enables mankind, through the medium of Noah and his 
family, to compute forever the period in eternity when time began. 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 475 

The genealogy of Adam was also designed to indicate the time 
when the present order of nature began ; otherwise Theoretical 
Geology would have enjoyed an unrestrained liberty with its 
myriads of ages. And what would have been the doom of the 
whole Christian Dispensation in its relation to sin, should the ef- 
forts to discard the Mosaic genealogy obtain the general consent 
of mankind ? "W hither would the thoughts of man conduct him 
in his speculations upon the dispensation of the Creator in per- 
mitting the corruption of human nature, and the " curse " which 
is stamped upon human affairs, without the circumstantial reve- 
lation upon which mankind may now rest with an assurance that 
it was, at least, their own optional condition ? Where would be 
the consolation and the countervailing goodness of the Creator, 
which, in their connection with Christianity, are meted out in the 
early promise of a yet hopeful future ? 

The Mosaic Genealogy, therefore, is of Divine origin, and has, 
of necessity, a final cause which can never be defeated. That 
object, as I have said, is to enable man at all times to trace up 
his connection, in a comprehensible manner, to his created par- 
ents, and to thus connect himself, in duty, dependence, adoration, 
realization, with the Being to whom he owes his existence and 
enjoyments, while his sympathies with his race shall preserve, 
by the same means, an unbroken chain, his rational curiosity be 
always satisfied as he mounts along the line of his descent, till he 
comes to a limit where inquiry merges into contentment, where 
his Soul rests upon the outskirts of Creation, and bej^ond which. 
he discerns nothing but an eternity from which he impulsively 
shrinks to dwell upon events within the grasp of his knowledge. 
Such, then, being the only final cause of the Mosaic genealogy 
of man, and being of God, nothing can defeat its full operation. 
It is, therefore, plain that before this backward path can cease to 
be travelled in an intelligible and comprehensive manner, there 
will be an end of time in relation to man ; and instead of the 
"millions of ages" which Theoretical Geology prophesies as an 
equivalent to man for the " millions of ages allotted to animals 
before our times," or that "the end of the scheme," according to 
Sir Charles, "is too vast to be within the reach of our philosoph- 
ical inquiries, or even our speculations," no rational man will 
pretend that, with all the advantages of a chain of historical me- 



476 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

mentos, monuments of art, &c, he can grasp even a period of 
100,000 years. As the mind glances at such a period of time, 
either past or to come, it is lost at once in the immensity of space. 
The Mosaic genealogy, therefore, has an interesting bearing not 
only upon the era of man's creation, but the geological prospects 
of the present order of nature ; and we thus reach the conclusion, 
also, that reason teaches exactly what God reveals. 

If, however, on the other hand, the objects of the, genealogy be 
not of the intellectual and moral nature which I have assigned, 
what was the motive for its institution? Or is it objected that 
if such have been its objects, why was it not delivered to man 
till the era of Moses ? I answer, for the plain reason that it was 
rendered superfluous by the longevity of man anterior to the 
Flood, which happened Anno Mundi 1655, when Noah, the ninth 
in descent from Adam, was 600 years old, and Moses was almost 
a contemporary with the inmates of the ark. 

More remains to be said of the special details of Creation as 
supplying farther internal proof of the revelation of the Narra- 
tive and of its literal meaning. I have hitherto gone elaborately, 
especially in Chapter VII, into a demonstration of the absurdi- 
ties of spontaneity of living beings, and of all the doctrines of 
the evolution of animals from a " primordial form " or " cell," &c. 
But more than that : I have also presented a very special demon- 
stration of the absolute necessity of the creation of man and all 
mammiferons animals, and all birds whose young are unfledged, 
in a state of maturity both of body and mind, and that thence the 
principle must have been coextensive with the animal kingdom. 
Unity of Design, therefore, required a mature creation of the veg- 
etable kingdom, as a part of a consistent whole. But besides the 
consistency of Design, that maturity of plants was indispensable 
to the animal kingdom ; and as if a disbelief of the statement 
would spring up, two other special reasons are assigned — u For 
the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was 
not a man to till the ground" 

This was on the day preceding the completion of the sun ; and 
we are thus supplied by Unity of Design with an exquisite in- 
ternal proof of a threefold nature : 1st, of the sun's completion 
on tbe fourth Day ; 2d, of the creation of the vegetable king- 
dom in a state of maturity ; 3d, that there was no rain till the 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 477 

fourth Day — since the completion of the sun was not only nec- 
essary to vegetation, but to that evaporation of water which 
should result in rain. 

And again, in great consistency of language as well as of pur- 
pose — " The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden." And 
yet there should have been, in the economy of Design, seeds in 
the earth to be at once ready for vegetation, as they are only of 
annual production by plants. Had the creation of plants "before 
they were in the earth" been alone announced, and which was 
specifically and alone intended for the immediate wants of the 
animal kingdom, there would have been a manifest defect in De- 
sign in neglecting an important provision (the seeds) for the pe- 
culiar economy of vegetation. But more than that; had the 
writer confined his statement to the production of seeds, it would 
have most deeply wounded the consistency of the Narrative; 
since no provision would have been made for the tribes of ani- 
mals that subsist upon plants. To this should be added, also, 
the consideration that the mature creation of plants is unques- 
tionably one of the last things that would have occurred in those 
early days to the mind of any one not informed of the fact. In- 
deed, there are many writers who deny that Kevelation inculcates 
such an opinion, and regard it, as they do the mature creation of 
animals, as an absurdity. "What I" says Theoretical Geology, 
"create the sap, and bark, and the concentric circles by which 
we determine the growth of plants !" Why not as well as blood 
and the various animal organs? Why not as well as the sap, 
the germ, and the several other component parts of seeds? 

Nor may Theoretical Geology explain away the direct affir- 
mation that God created "every plant of the field before it was 
in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew," by the 
natural phraseology in which the event is also expressed, and 
which has an equal reference to the created seeds — "Let the 
earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree 
yielding fruit," &c, since the same language is employed in rela- 
tion to animals — "Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
after his kind, and cattle after their kind," &c; while it is de- 
clared in the next following verse that — " God made the beast 
after his kind," &c. And, as I have demonstrated the necessity 
of the direct creation of animals in a state of maturity (Chapter 



478 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

YII. ), it follows that what is said of the connection of the earth 
with their production is simply a figurative allusion to their in- 
timate relations to the globe ; and therefore more particularly so 
as it respects the creation of plants. 

The advantage which Theoretical Geology has taken of the 
foregoing figurative language in regard to the creation of ani- 
mals and plants, while it neglects the explanatory affirmations 
that they were direct acts of Creative Power, and in a state of 
maturity, supposes the greatest absurdities that have ever dis- 
figured the annals of Science — seventeen elements detaching 
themselves from their inorganic combinations with forty others 
to form all the beasts of the earth, while the birds and all aquat- 
ic animals are devoutly supposed by " Geological Science " to 
have been evolved by " the parturitive powers of water," which 
is composed of only two elements ! The figurative expressions 
in relation to land animals and plants refer simply to their spe- 
cial place of abode, while that in regard to aquatic animals is 
alike significant; and as birds fly in the air, and many swim the 
waters, their habits are thus denoted when speaking of their 
creation. 

But, as the vegetable world is indispensable to the animal, had 
it been distinctly said, as it certainly would have been by an un- 
inspired writer of the time of Moses, and as Theoretical Geology 
maintains, that the first plants grew up from their embryo state, 
or had the affirmation that plants "were created before they 
were in the earth, and every herb before it grew " been omitted, 
it can not be doubted that Geology would have hailed in the fact 
a flagrant violation of the exigencies of the animal tribes, and a 
fatal defect in unity and harmony of Design. 

Besides what I have now said upon the subject before us, I 
have hitherto presented an argument founded upon the coinci- 
dences between the whole elementary, organic, and physical con- 
stitution of man, animals, and plants, and the equal evidences 
which they supply in their apparently endless and concurrent de- 
signs, that they were harmonious parts of one consistent plan 
(Chapter YII.) ; and therefore we are compelled, philosophically, 
to suppose that plants, like man and animals, were originally the 
direct production of Creative Power. Also, the intended pur- 
poses of the vegetable kingdom equally enforce the certainty that 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOE. 479 

the Creator (who, it is admitted, does nothing in vain) did not 
clothe the earth with vegetation till just antecedently to the crea- 
tion of man and animals, for whose uses it was alone intended. 
What, therefore, Philosophy thus enforces is exactly concurrent 
with the Mosaic statements. 

Bat here is something more — a coincidence of statements which 
would be proof enough for the determination of any other ques- 
tion — namely, that Adam found on the sixth Day the Garden of 
Eden all in bloom for his reception. You grant, perhaps, the an- 
imals, but halt at the plants. But surely there is a greater diffi- 
culty in supposing that the wits of the writer would have led him 
to fabricate the statement as to the maturity of plants, that it 
should be consistent not only w T ith his statements as to the crea- 
tion of man and animals in a state of maturity, but, more improb- 
able than all, that he should have contrived the statement rela- 
tive to plants so as to meet the exigencies of a natural day, the 
exigencies of animals as to food, and the statement that the garden 
was ready for Adam on the sixth Day. Geology, indeed, corrobo- 
rates these precise statements of the Narrative. "The evidence 
of organic remains," says Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Ge- 
ology, "shows the origin of plants and animals to have been con- 
temporaneous. If any creation of vegetables preceded that of ani- 
mals [as speculative Geology assumes], no evidence of such an event 
has yet been discovered by the researches of Geology." And I 
say, moreover, that the foregoing various coincidences, so replete, 
also, with the perfection of Design and unity of plan, and espe- 
cially the wonderful coincidences that are involved in the state- 
ment relative to plants, establish conclusively the natural length 
of the Creative Days. Such a compact system of multifarious 
parts, and all concurring together in the most perfect harmony, 
and each indispensable to the rest, forms a mass of circumstantial 
proof far beyond any thing that has so often consigned the trans- 
gressor to the dungeon or the gibbet. 

The statement in regard to the creation of plants in a state of 
maturity, and the simultaneous production of seeds in the earth, 
is probably the most remarkable of any on record in its compre- 
hensive import. This is seen, 1st, in its necessity to unity of de- 
sign as it respects the mature creation of man and animals ; 2d, 
in the necessity of plants to the immediate wants of animals ; 3d, 



480 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

in the creation of seeds, that there should be no failure of a succes- 
sion, particularly of annual plants; 4th, in the great probability 
that the production of seeds in the earth would have appeared to 
an uninspired writer to render the creation of plants a work of 
supererogation ; 5th, in making the latter statement a matter of 
special detail after the general statement that embraces the seeds ; 
6th, in assigning reasons for creating plants in a mature condition ; 
7th, in the necessity of the statement as demanded by the natural 
length of the Mosaic Days; while its absence, and the statement 
as to the seeds, would have occasioned very natural doubts as to 
the means of supplying food to the herbivorous animals on the 
fifth and sixth days ; 8th, in the manner in which the omission 
of so important an event would have impaired the authenticity 
of the entire Narrative. 

After the production of the universe in a chaotic state on the 
evening of the first day, the foregoing order of Creation as it re- 
spects Light, the Atmosphere, the completion of the Earth, then 
of the Sun, the creation of Plants, next of Animals, and lastly of 
Man, and their intimate and dependent relations as constituent 
parts of a progressive system of Designs, form an irresistible in- 
ternal proof of the Inspiration of the Narrative, of the absolute 
creation of all organic beings in a state of maturity, and of the 
natural length of the Creative Days. Moreover, besides this spe- 
cial proof of Design, there is nothing whatever in the organiza- 
tion of plant, animal, or man, that would denote the foregoing 
order of succession ; nothing to show why man should not have 
been the first being; nothing whatever to comfort the develop- 
ment doctrines. And to ascribe all this combination of Designs 
to the laws of nature would be the same as referring it to a direct 
act of the Creator Himself. 

If the critic should desire information as to whence came the 
necessary soil for the seeds and created plants so early as the 
third day, I would refer him to my work on " Theoretical Geology" 
where I have endeavored to show that it would be a very proba- 
ble consequence of the organization of the earth out of its solu- 
tion in water ; and, moreover, that the earth contained the requi- 
site solvent materials for such a solution. (See also Appendix I.) 
And why should it be any more objected that a provision for 
the sustenance of plants was thus indirectly made, particularly as 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 481 

the continued existence of the animal kingdom depends upon 
them, than that the means of sustenance were provided in a direct 
manner for man and animals. Least of all, however, can Theo- 
retical Geology, while resting with complacency upon its " remod- 
ellings of the earth," " progressive developments," &c, arraign our 
much -needed provision for the roots of plants and for seeds, 
although it be no more in the Book than any of the assumptions 
of Theoretical Geology. But here Geology comes to our aid 
with its own facts, for among them it finds the exuviae of both 
plants and animals as low down as the transition rocks. Indeed, 
11 In all the stratified rocks above the primary, more or less of the 
relics or traces of animals and plants occur," from which it neces- 
sarily follows that — "Dry land, capable of sustaining vegetation, 
must have existed soon after the deposition of the fossiliferous 
rocks commenced." — Hitchcock's Geology. But more than that ; 
for we have seen that animals and plants of the highest organiza- 
tion are found in the lowest of the secondary rocks. From all 
which it appears that Theoretical Geology is as much in need of 
pulverulent earth for vegetation as ourselves. (See Appendix I.) 

We have already had before us, in a general manner, the 
question as to the length of the Mosaic Days 5 and as this is im- 
portant to the authenticity of the Narrative, I shall endeavor, as 
in my former work, to show still farther that the "Evening 
and Morning" of those days were of the duration of our own 
day. In accomplishing this, the literal interpretation of the Nar- 
rative throughout will be no longer doubtful ; and we shall have 
thus obtained the Divine sanction of our demonstration of the 
substantive existence and self-acting nature of the soul. 

The inspired writer evidently anticipated the infidelity of fu- 
ture ages upon this subject; for, very remarkably, in so brief a 
Narrative as that of Creation, he defines the length of the Crea- 
tive Days in three different ways "evening and morning," 
" light and darkness," " day and night." And coming to the 
Fourth Commandment, we are again very forcibly reminded to 
beware of the speculations of Theoretical Geology. Why is the 
word "evening" associated with the other explicative, "morn- 
ing?" Why was one called "night" and the other u dayV 
Will Theoretical Geology answer us that? They must be in- 
terpreted in some sort of consistency with the geological assump- 

31 



482 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tion of long indefinite periods, especially the words evening and 
night, and in their explicative relations to morning, light, and day; 
and they must be interpreted, too, in perfect conformity with the 
true intent and meaning of the Fourth Commandment, which is 
predicated of the declaration in the Narrative, that—" God blessed 
the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested 
[desisted] from all His work which God created and made." It 
must be shown, also, from analogies derived from the present 
races of animals and plants, that long periods of darkness as well 
as of light were most conducive to their growth, multiplication, 
and general well-being. That there was absolute night, positive 
darkness, and daylight, and in regular alternation as at the present 
time, is most emphatically and variously announced; particu- 
larly that — " God called the light Day, and the darkness He called 
Night;" and all these Divine names, with only one possible 
meaning in their aggregate relations, have been regularly perpet- 
uated down to our own time. Moreover, He said "the evening 
and the morning were the first day ;" or, more exactly — "And 
there ivas evening, and there was morning, One Day — Hebrew, lina 
fii* 1 , yom ahad. Thus, at the very outset of Creation, the inspired 
writer defines what is meant by evening and morning ; and how 
could this have been done so clearly and effectually as by de- 
claring that they constituted one day? And mark the farther 
exactness — the evening before the morning, because darkness 
preceded light. This being obtained, the analogy passes over to 
us in behalf of the obvious meaning of the other days. 

Again I ask, do all these precise and expressive terms — even- 
ing and morning, darkness and light, night and day, in their imme- 
diate relations, ivord and ivord, term and terms, each separately 
and collectively defining the others, stand for " long indefinite pe- 
riods of time," or "cycles of ages?" "Was such the intended 
meaning of these several definitions ? Let the child answer. 
And why has Theoretical Geology expended so much labor 
upon the word dii, yom or day, and utterly neglected the Night? 
Why has it not brought them in apposition, and defied the com- 
mon sense of mankind ? And what will Hebrew roots say to all 
this — especially "yom?" But the foregoing were not the only 
means taken by the Creator to enable Himself to be understood; 
for He also declared that He "divided the light from the darkness;" 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 483 

and He still farther defined the meaning of the word day, as used 
to denote the duration of the Six Days, when He completed the 
organization of the sun by placing the word day in its intended 
relation to the word year. Thus — " and let them be for signs 
and for seasons, and for days and years." Again, the natural im- 
port of day and night, one of which was called morning and the 
other evening, is exactly declared by the phrase — " the greater 
light to rule the day, a-nd the lesser light to rule the night" (ver. 
16). And yet again (ver. 18), not only is the same explanation 
repeated, but is made to define the meaning (in ver. 4) of divid- 
ing the light from the darkness on the first day. Thus (ver. 18) — 
" and to rule over the day, and over the night, and to divide the 
light from the darkness" — while it is said (ver. 4) that — " God di- 
vided the light from the darkness " on the first day, and called the 
light day, and the darkness He called night: and then putting 
them together under the farther designation of evening and morn- 
ing, He embraced them in the same collective sense as the word 
day is now employed. Did He divide the light from the dark- 
ness differently on the first and fourth Days? What says Phi- 
lology ? 

But Theoretical Geology has involved the first day in such 
confusion by arresting the progress of Creation after the general 
announcement in the first verse, we will look still more critically 
at so important a point as the beginning of time. In the first 
place, then, the work of that day consisted of two great sym- 
metrical parts, but distinct from each other. 

1st. "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the 
Earth.' 7 

2d. "And God said, Let there be light : and there was light." 

3d. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called 
Night. And the evening and the morning were the First Day." 

Now it is evident that the creation of the Heaven and the 
Earth constituted a part of the First Day's work from the man- 
ner in which it is associated with the creation of light through 
the analytical terms, night, darkness, and evening, and light and 
day, and the collective term, first day ; and from what we have 
seen of the nature of light, the Earth's revolution upon its axis 
would have begun at once that division of time whose astronom- 
ical account is so philosophically delayed till the writer came to 



484 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

speak specifically of the sun on the Fourth Day ; and this, more 
especially, as other uses of the sun were to be then assigned. 
There were, therefore, two distinct parts in the work of the First 
Day which no sophistry can obscure. And since there was no 
light when the first part was accomplished, it necessarily consti- 
tutes the evening of the First Day ; and by all that is sound in 
Astronomy the collective term First Day means one revolution 
of the Earth upon its axis ; and the most obvious analogy and 
Unity of Design enforce the conclusion that the term First Day 
is intended to imply a period of time corresponding with that of 
each of the subsequent days. Nothing, I say, can be more evi- 
dent than the fact that the progress of Creation during the dark- 
ness which preceded the production of light was of the same du- 
ration as that of the other creative days, and that its duration 
must be determined in that consistent manner. The simple ex- 
pression alone, therefore, "The evening and the morning were 
the First Day," completely explodes "the long indefinite time" 
which has been assumed to " follow the first verse." Moreover, 
from what is known of the exigencies of light to vegetation, and 
the exact adaptation of the sun, it becomes evident that had the 
writer represented that a year or a month intervened between 
the creation of plants and the completion of the sun on the 
Fourth Day, the Kecord would not be received as the prompt- 
ing of Inspiration. Hence it is manifest that this consideration, 
which shows the immediate succession of the Fourth Day after 
the creation of plants on the Third Day, and the necessity of the 
immediate completion of the sun, is alone sufficient to establish 
the certainty of the intended natural length of the several Mosaic 
Days. And again, as we have seen, the limitation of each of the 
Six Days to twenty-four hours is farther and conclusively shown 
by the creation of the vegetable kingdom in a state of maturity, 
that it might be in readiness for the animal tribes on their ap- 
pearance, and which is, therefore, significant of the immediate suc- 
cession of the latter. The first "mist" and "rain" shows the same. 
No other demonstration, although we have many others to the 
same effect, can be necessary to the entire subversion of the whole 
fabric of Theoretical Geology, which was once on the verge of a 
precipice when it placed its fossils in a long cycle of ages which 
it had assumed as following the announcement of "the begin- 



THE NAERATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 485 

ning," in the first verse. But on discovering the "eyes of the 
Trilobite " (p. 436), it concluded that its primitive animals and 
plants must have enjoyed the advantages of light,' and it so far 
surrendered this position as inconsistent with the dignity of a 
"science," and plunged them into the same darkness on shifting 
its ground to the Six Days of Creation. Those Days then be- 
came its great object of assault; and this, by isolating words 
from all their surrounding context, investing them with false 
analogies, and in defiance of the Fourth Commandment. It was 
not contented with limiting itself to the walks of " Science," but 
it rushed, with Bible in hand, into all the highways and by-ways 
of society, and struck at the fountain-head of popular education, 
till Eevelation now lies prostrate before it. We hear much of a 
new translation of the Holy Scriptures to adapt them better to 
the advanced state of knowledge. But is this revolutionary age 
auspicious for such an enterprise ? What would be the new ren- 
dering of the very first chapter? Is it any exaggeration to sur- 
mise that it would be in conformity with the subjoined note?* 

But Theoretical Geology has supplied the very best proof that 
the literal meaning of the Mosaic Days is the only one which 
common sense approves, in its hearty acquiescence in " the long 
indefinite period" after "the beginning," as advocated by Chal- 
mers, Smith, and other divines; and in the cautious manner in 
which it began the assault upon the Mosaic Daj^s, when, accord- 
ing to Hugh Miller, " the scheme which was perfectly adequate 
in 1814 was found in 1839 to be 119 longer so." Nevertheless, 
Theoretical Geology by no means abandons its long period of 

* I give only examples of the " scientific readings " — 

Gen. i., 4. "And God divided the light from the darkness." 

Ver. 5. And God called the light a long indefinite period, and the darkness He 
called another long indefinite period, and the evening and the morning were the first 
cycle of cycles. 

Ver. 14. And God said, Let there he lights in the firmament of the heaven to di- 
vide the long indefinite period of light from the long indefinite period of darkness, and 
let them he for signs, and for seasons, and for long indefinite periods of light, and for 
thousands of years. 

Exod. xx., 9, &c. Six cycles of ages shalt thou labor and do all thy work : hut the 
seventh cycle of ages is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any 
work, &c. For in six cycles of ages the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all 
that in them is, and rested the seventh cycle of ages: "wherefore the Lord blessed 
the seventh cycle of ages, and hallowed it. — See Gen. ii., 2, 3. 



486 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

time antecedently to the light of the first day, where it places 
the stratified rocks that are destitute of organic remains; and 
this period of darkness is made to justify an extension of the Six 
Creative Days by calling it the everdng of the first day. That 
long " evening," or " night," is then taken as a criterion for the 
length of the subsequent days; when, if it had any foundation, 
it should be applied to the following evenings, and not to the day 
— thus leaving Theoretical Geology with more than a due pro- 
portion of "darkness" for the production and growth of plants 
and animals. 

But that is not the worst of it ; for the latest geological author- 
ity declares that a most luxuriant vegetation flourished even be- 
fore the creation of the sun. Thus, in a highly applauded Lecture 
by Prof. F. H. Miller (Sept., 1869), the " Scientist" said that— 

" Coal has been found as far south as Australia ; which shows 
that, in the coal-period the earth's surface was heated from be- 
neath ; the SUN NOT HAVING BEEN YET CREATED" (page 31). 

The growth of plants, however, without light, is alwa} 7 s implied 
when the creation of the sun is assigned to the Fourth Day. 

Again, this so-called " Science " assumes that the Seventh Day 
is a perpetual one, because nothing is said of morning and even- 
ing, and then applies it analogically to the other days. The ab- 
sence of the repetition on the Seventh Day is clearly a matter of 
common sense, as there was no work done on that day, and its 
duration was defined by the length of the preceding days, and 
especially so by the Fourth Commandment. And yet Theoreti- 
cal Geology delights in the omission, when it would have ridi- 
culed a repetition as a redundant particularity. The following 
is an example of the logical manner in which an advantage is 
taken by Theoretical Geology of the omission of evening and 
morning in the brief reference to the day upon which nothing 
was done. Thus, the Eev. Mr. McDonald, having assumed that 
the Seventh Day is of incomprehensible duration, remarks that — 

" If the foregoing be a correct interpretation of God's Sabbath, 
it necessarily and by analogy follows that the other days of the 
Narrative of Creation must be taken not in a limited or literal 
sense, but in a sense corresponding to that of the seventh — the 
great period of grace and salvation." [!] — Creation and the 
Fall, 1856. 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 487 

And yet this able Theologian, who adopts the worst specula- 
tions in Geology, charges "Burmeister in Germany, and Agas- 
siz, Morton, and Nott in America," with infidelity because they 
are among "the opponents of the doctrine of the unity of the hu- 
man species " — a question which has been left far more open by 
Eevelation to speculative minds than the meaning of the Sev- 
enth Day, or the length of the Six Creative Days. But Theo- 
logians who pervert the import of the Narrative in the forego- 
ing manner may expect greater evidences of a general infidelity 
than has yet awakened their apprehension. They should con- 
sider that their example, in having contributed largely to a dis- 
belief in the Narratives of Creation and the Flood, may possibly 
be urged in carrying out an assault upon the chapter relative to 
the Fall of man, which forms the basis of Christianity. 

Divines, learned in Theology, continue to render their services 
in advancing the interests of Theoretical Geology as it respects 
the length of the Creative Days, notwithstanding its substitution 
of the development hj^potheses for the Creative Acts of Eevela- 
tion. A late writer of a popular work on " Geology and Eeve- 
lation " (1870), the Eev. Dr. Molloy, has a chapter in which he 
argues in behalf of " the long indefinite period after the begin- 
ning" and another chapter in which he concedes to Geology all 
its requirements in respect to the Six Days, and has an exhaust- 
ive inquiry into the meaning of the word EY" 1 (yom, day), with a 
special reference to its diversion from its natural import as ap- 
plied to indicate the duration of the several periods that were 
formed, respectively, by the succession of evening and morning, 
or darkness and light. 

Another, and also one of the latest of the same school, is the 
Eev. Dr. J. P. Thompson, in his work on Man in Genesis and in 
Geology (1870), in which he says — " I suppose it now to be well 
understood that neither this word itself (Day), nor Biblical 
usage, nor the context here, requires us to understand by a Day 
a period of twenty-four hours. The term is first applied to the 
appearing of light after the darkness of chaos. Chaos was the 
evening, light the morning. But ivhen did this darkness begin? 
And how long did the light thus engendered continue? Was 
this merely a natural day ? Why should we attempt to measure 
this first period by a chronometer which, according to the narra- 



488 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

tive itself, could not have come into use until the fourth day, when 
the heavenly bodies became visible from our globe, so as to 
serve for the measurement of times and seasons? In the fourth 
verse of the second chapter, we have an example of the use of 
this word Day to cover the whole period of operations included 
in the seven days of the first chapter ; ' These are the genera- 
tions of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in 
the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.' 
Here the whole term of creation is comprehended ivithin one day. 
Again, we are told that 'one day is with the Lord as a thousand 
years, and a thousand years as one day.' " 

" Chaos " was not " the evening " in contradistinction to " light, 
the morning," as supposed in the last quotation; otherwise every 
successive evening would be a state of chaos. Moreover, the 
true question, which has been wholly neglected, is not as to the 
duration of darkness before the production of light, but the time 
employed by the Creator in bringing the Universe into its cha- 
otic condition. That determines the length of the first evening, 
and the time then occupied by the Creator is shown by all the 
subsequent evenings. As to the duration of the darkness anterior 
to the morning of the first day, it may have existed from all eter- 
nity. Nor is there the slightest intimation that the Creator was 
longer employed in the work of the first evening than in those 
which followed, nor that there was any pause in the progressive 
work. As to the "chronometer," if there was light on the first 
day, that light was in the unfinished sun, as I have endeavored 
to show, and I suppose that none, or a very few, will assume 
that the Earth did not then, as now, revolve on its axis. And as 
to our Author's interpretation of the word " Day," I have already 
shown that the word is too manifestly used for the Creative Days 
in our specific sense of twenty-four hours, and at other times in 
our own broad, generic sense, for any farther criticism. Indeed, 
the very example which our Author offers is an absolute exem- 
plification of this meaning ; otherwise, instead of — " in the Day 
that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," it should 
have been — in the Days, &c. The words u in the day 11 are there- 
fore intended in a comprehensive sense, and to include the Six 
Creative Days. But that is not all ; for this latter phraseology 
clearly implies that the Six Days of Creation are intended to be 



THE NARRATIVE OE CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 489 

received according not only to their natural import, but as de- 
fined by the Historian in a great variety of ways. Our Author's 
other example — " One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day" — has been often strained to 
suit the Creative Days to the speculations of Theoretical Geol- 
ogy. That expression, however, has no relation to the question, 
but was intended by Peter as a contrast between time and eter- 
nity, and between finite beings and the Infinite. It is precisely 
of the same import as the Psalmist's expression — "A thousand 
years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a 
watch in the night." Theoretical Geology must show better 
cause than that, or abandon the Narrative as irreconcilable with 
its hypotheses. But there are numerous instances in the Bible 
where the word Day is intended to express an indefinite period 
of time. Indeed, the phrase "In the Day 11 occurs not less 
than seventy-five times, and the phrase In the Days forty-four 
times, where they are employed in an indefinite sense; nor will 
any one seriously insist that in either instance it carries with it 
the same meaning of Day as employed throughout the first 
chapter of Genesis. Its intended meaning in all the cases is 
readily determined by its connections with other words or sen- 
tences. Moreover, it is admitted by all who are conversant with 
the subject that the Hebrews understood by the word Day, as 
employed in the first chapter of Genesis, that it consisted of 
twenty-four hours. And so always in other instances where it 
occurs in connection with the words evening and morning. 
Bishop Newton, on the Prophecies, gives an example in illustra- 
tion. Thus — 

" The answer is (Dan. viii., 14) — ' Unto two thousand and three 
hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.' In the orig- 
inal it is — l J7nto two thousand and three hundred evenings and 
mornings 1 — an evening and morning being, in Hebrew, the nota- 
tion of time for a day. Afterwards it is said, ' evening and morn- 
ing' (ver.26)." 

It appears, therefore, that the word Day is used in the Narra- 
tive of Creation in the three obvious senses which prevail at the 
present time. In the first chapter it is used analytically, and 
stands for "light," as "night" does for ''darkness;" 2d, in a 
compound sense, embracing both "light" and "darkness;" 3d, 



490 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

in the second chapter (ver. 4), it is employed to denote that era 
in time when " the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." 

Besides what I have said of an equally exact definition of 
"evening" as of the "morning," the order of succession as to 
"darkness" and "light" is strictly predicated of the order of 
events; and had it been "morning" and "evening," as required 
by Theoretical Geology, the arrangement would have contradict- 
ed the premises upon which it is founded, and given to Geology 
a triumphant stand-point. No : the Creator began his work in 
darkness, and launched the Universe into existence during the 
last few hours of that inexpressible void of light. That portion 
of the pre-existing darkness was the "evening" or "night" of 
"the first day," and when "light" was created it was "divided 
from the darkness" or antecedent "night," and formed the other 
division of the day, which was continued till the evening of the 
second day. Nor can any perversion of words show that the 
time employed by the Creator in the first stage of his work, and 
which he designated as the "evening" or "night" of the "first 
day," is not as good a measure of a definite portion of time as 
the word "day;" nay, even more, since the "evening" and 
" night " are not susceptible of any equivocal meaning. Indeed, 
it is manifest that even a fictitious writer would not have been 
guilty of the inconsistency of implying that the first morning 
and evening, and the first day, were of any longer duration than 
the subsequent, or of intending a disparity in any of the days 
that would have contradicted his own explanations, or the obvi- 
ous import of words. Nor can we fail of surprise that it should 
not have been readily seen that the first work of Creation may 
just as well have preceded the usual period of daylight as that 
the former should have followed the latter ; while, also, had the 
order been reversed by the Sacred Historian, he would not only 
have thrown the first day into confusion, and therefore all the 
other days, but he would have represented the Creator as viola- 
ting some of the most important philosophy of Design. Would 
it have been any more intelligible, or more consistent with the 
" canons of criticism," or with the compact style of the Narra- 
tive, to have said, In the beginning of the first day, when the fact 
is embraced in the statement that " the evening and the morn- 
ing were the first day ?" 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 491 

But what disposition shall be made of the Fourth Command- 
ment? especially as two reasons, defining specifically the length 
of the Creative Days, are assigned for keeping holy the Sabbath 
Day, namely — " For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, 
&c, and rested (desisted) the seventh day : wherefore the Lord 
blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." (See Gen. ii., 2, 3 ; 
and Note, p. 485.) Nothing but the sophistry of ambition or in- 
fidelity can approach this Divine exposition for the purpose of 
distorting its meaning. I may also insist, in behalf of the cause 
which I advocate, that it is vain to attempt a mutilation of the 
plain meaning of the Narrative of Creation by digging at a "He- 
brew root." The context, I say and I show, everywhere explains 
the Divine meaning. It will, however, be useful as well as amus- 
ing to observe still farther the special disposition which Theoret- 
ical Geology makes of the Sabbath Day (see p. 487, &c). As is 
always the case with innovators upon the Narrative of Creation 
who desire a hearing from the religious part of the community, 
the Fourth Commandment is a troublesome difficulty. There 
are several Authors before me who supply, in their concurrent 
interpretation, a very good example of the modus operandi of 
Theoretical Geology in disposing of problems of this nature, and 
I shall quote their joint disposal of the subject in the language 
of the most renowned and adroit in the "Science." The reader 
will not fail to observe the "presumptions," the substitution of 
"periods" for "days" (according to the parody in Note, p. 485), 
and also the singularly logical and demonstrative nature, as well 
as the aptness, of the parallel which is presented to his imagina- 
tion between the supposed duplicate meaning of the Sabbath Bay 
and the " huge earth and a geographical globe." Thus, then, the 
long distinguished expounder of geological problems, of whom it 
was said by the Eev. Dr. Chalmers, that "since Scott's death he 
was the greatest Scotchman that was left:" 

" God, the Creator," says Hugh Miller, "who wrought during 
six periods, rested during the seventh ; and as we have no evi- 
dence whatever that he recommenced his work of Creation, as, 
on the contrary, man seems to be the last formed of creatures, 
God may be resting still. The presumption is strong that this 
Sabbath is an extended period, not a natural day, and that the 
work of redemption is his Sabbath-day's work. [!] And so I can 



492 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

not see that it in the least interferes with the integrity of the rea- 
son for the Fourth Commandment to read it thus — ' Work dur- 
ing six periods, and rest on the seventh ; for in six periods the 
Lord created the heavens and the earth, and in the seventh pe- 
riod he rested. [See Note, p. 485.] The Divine periods may 
have been very great, the human periods very small ; just AS 
a vast continent or the huge earth itself is very great, and a map or 
geographical globe very SMALL." ! ! 

And yet is all this one of the ablest perversions of the subject 
which Theoretical Geology has yet attempted, while, also, it is a 
good example of the inductive philosophy of the "Science," and, 
as we shall have seen, of the common geological mode of dispos- 
ing of the Sabbath Day and of the Fourth Commandment. (See 
p. 487.) But what will the unskilled in this management of 
words, the masses of mankind, who are the main objects of The- 
oretical Geology, say to this? Besides, it is the sheerest nonsense 
to deduce not only a day of twenty -four hours and a geological age 
from the same statement relative to the seventh day, but two 
propositions also of totally different import. That is to say, 
Theoretical Geology assumes that God, by the Fourth Com- 
mandment (which is absolutely relative to man alone), enjoined 
upon man a rest of twenty-four hours once in seven days, because 
God had accomplished His work in six geological eras, and there- 
fore, having nothing farther to do, "rested" (ceased) from His 
work at the end of that time ; while, also, He intended by this 
same decree (alone relative to man) to command himself to rest 
for a " Sabbath age" but without the slightest intimation to that 
effect. 

Such, however, has become the common doctrine even among 
Theological Geologists, of which examples have been already 
presented. The Eev. Dr. Molloy, one of the latest writers, while 
defending, as we have seen (pp. 443, 487), the assumed long in- 
definite period after " the beginning," and supplying an elabo- 
rate discussion upon the word day, with a view to its unlimited 
adaptation to the uses of Theoretical Geology, turns also to its 
advantage the seventh day, of which he thinks there is no end. 
Like all others who attempt to explain away the obvious mean- 
ing of the first six days, he makes no reference to the three sev- 
eral modes in which the inspired Writer defines and protects 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 493 

the true meaning of the word di* 1 , yom, or day — that is, by " even- 
ing and morning," "night and day," "darkness and light" — but 
wanders over the Bible in pursuit of examples in which the 
word is as obviously employed in its indefinite sense. He does 
even more than this, and in such a novel manner as to render 
his construction worthy of notice. Thus, he assumes for the 
word different latitudes of time on the several Mosaic Days, and 
compounds them into eras, according to the supposed exigencies 
of Theoretical Geology. He says : 

" The reader must not think it AMISS, in this distribution of the 
Mosaic Days, that FOUR out of the SIX are crowded together into 
one Geological Age, while each of the other two has an en- 
tire age assigned to itself. If the Days of Creation were indefi- 
nite periods, there is no incongruity in supposing that one may 
have corresponded to a longer, another to a shorter interval in the 
history of our planet." And as to the seventh day, he remarks 
that — " The six days of Creation are contrasted with the seventh 
day of God's rest ; and this seventh day of God's rest is unques- 
tionably a long period of undefined duration. [And now for the 
logic] From all this it is obvious to conclude, that we may 
fairly adopt this mode of interpreting the Mosaic Days, if it 
will assist us in reconciling the received conclusions of science 
with the truths of Eevelation." — Molloy's Geology and Revela- 
tion, 1870. 

I have shown how the duration of the seventh day is to be in- 
terpreted by that of the preceding days. It is simply a day of 
pause, and surrounds itself with the preceding six as the basis 
upon which it is founded, both as to duration and sanctification. 
This is declared not only at the time when it was hallowed in 
commemoration of the past, and sanctified to the glory of God 
for what He had done, and as a brief period of uniform recurrence 
allotted to the highest interests of mankind, but is farther con- 
firmed by the Fourth Commandment in nearly the verbal lan- 
guage of the original promulgation, and accompanied by a repe- 
tition of the reasons which had been specifically predicated of the 
natural duration of the Six Creative Days. 

I say, therefore, again and again, that not only the Minister 
of Eeligion, but every other person of common understanding, 
must take along "Evening" "Darkness" and "Night 11 with his defi- 



494 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

nition of the word Day as employed by the inspired Writer in 
indicating the duration of the Creative Days ; and what then be- 
comes of " the long indefinite periods?" 

The question naturally arises, after all we have now seen, 
whether it was designed by the Creator that his account of His 
works should be intelligible to the masses of mankind for whom 
it was designed, as admitted by all, or that it should be so ambigu- 
ous as to delude all but the learned in Geology, and that its true 
interpretation should depend upon the ruins of Creation, and 
should await the slow process by which these ruins are exhumed, 
and then consigned to the ever fluctuating speculations of Theo- 
retical Geology. Or, if the Record of Creation be not clearly and 
readily intelligible, why was it delivered indiscriminately to man- 
kind? Why was more revealed than that — "In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth t n Why all the details not 
only in the first chapter, but the explanatory ones in the second, 
since the first verse pronounces the dependence of all things upon 
the Creator ? 

The Rev. Dr. Thompson, in his "Man in Genesis and in Geology" 
remarks : " How was this language understood by those to whom 
it was originally addressed?" He then quotes Max Muller's 
"Chips from a German 'Workshop'''' as saying that — "The great 
majority of readers transfer without hesitation the ideas which 
they connect with words as used in the nineteenth century to the 
mind of Moses or his contemporaries, forgetting altogether the 
distance which divides their language and their thoughts from 
the thoughts and language of the wandering tribes of Israel." 

It may be safely said of the foregoing that there never has 
been a time when the expression " Evening and Morning," and, 
as the Creator defines it to mean, "Night and Day," and "Dark- 
ness and Light," has been understood in any other possible sense 
than as consisting of one revolution of the earth upon its axis — 
and, least of all, that God would have prompted such a phraseol- 
ogy in three corresponding terms if he had meant to imply by 
it " a long indefinite period ;" and a like affirmation may be made 
of the precise, unvarying nature of every other part of the Nar- 
rative. Nor will the certainty of this be affected by the assump- 
tion that it was left to the discretion of Moses to communicate 
the Narrative in such language as seemed to him expedient, nor 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 495 

by regarding the Narrative as a joint production of the Creator 
and his Amanuensis, as supposed by Molloy in his " Geology and 
Revelation;" who says that — 

"What we maintain is simply this: that the Sacred Writer 
recorded faithfully, in language fitted to the ideas of his time, that 
portion of Eevelation which was committed to him ; and, in the 
accomplishment of this task, made such a choice of toords and 
phrases, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to whom all truth 
is present, as to set forth plainly those facts that were unfolded 
to him, without introducing any error about those facts of which 
he was ignorant." 

But all these attempts to affect the plain meaning of the Nar- 
rative are wholly fruitless, since its meaning does not depend in 
the least upon the Writer or Prompter, or the ignorance or opin- 
ions of the people of the era when it was promulgated, but upon 
the radical, unchangeable meaning of words and phrases, wheth- 
er expressed in Hebrew, or English, or any other language. We 
have seen, moreover, that the Narrative embraces one stupen- 
dous, consistent whole — precise, scientific, and consistent in all 
its details, from the time when the Word went forth " in the 
beginning" till it ceased on the seventh day. We have seen 
that the demands of Philosophy, as they lie embosomed in the 
sciences, sustain the Eecord of Creation in every detail, and that, 
had there been a single deviation in any part of the Narrative 
from its present exact meaning, that same Heaven-born, uncom- 
promising Philosophy would have pronounced it a clumsy fab- 
rication by man. The first chapter defines Creation in a phrase- 
ology that shall be most intelligible to all mankind; and the 
second, or chapter of greater details, expounds the exact mean- 
ing of whatever may appear ambiguous to a critical mind in the 
first chapter of more general statements. But all the statements 
are made in the most natural and intelligible manner, and are 
adapted to the illiterate as well as the man of science, to the 
child as well as the adult; and it is only the speculatist who 
would distort the meaning. It was also written, I repeat, before 
science had begun to dawn, when all was ingulfed in ignorance 
and superstition — save only the beams of light which were emit- 
ted from Heaven upon a chosen few. How otherwise could 
Moses have known that the laws of gravitation required the 



496 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

simultaneous creation of the universe ? And do not the subse- 
quent details render it certain that he would have represented 
the Earth as existing alone till the fourth day; considering, 
especially, how he has been misunderstood in this important 
matter ? Whence came his knowledge of those systematic, pro- 
gressive Designs which form the various subsequent parts in the 
order of creation ? Whence, that the " Spirit of God " should be 
instrumental in the reduction of the earth and the heavenly orbs 
from a state of chaos to their perfected condition ? (See Appen- 
dix I.) Whence, that light should have been created before the 
vegetable kingdom, considering, particularly, how the scientific 
of the nineteenth century have placed vegetation under the aus- 
pices of darkness? (Chap. XIIL, &c). How came he to know 
that plants should precede the creation of animals? How, that 
animals should precede man ? How, that they were made out of 
the dust of the ground? How, that the "firmament" or atmos- 
pheric air should anticipate vegetation? How, that it should 
"divide the waters from the waters?" (p. 470). How, that Uni- 
ty of Design required the completion of the sun, moon, and stars, 
on the fourth clay? Why so much detail in relation to the 
earth and its inhabitants, and a brief allusion only to the other 
heavenly orbs ? But I will not pursue this recapitulation. The 
very order of Creation alone, independently of all the other in- 
ternal proof supplied by the Narrative, is conclusive of its rev- 
elation by the Divine Being. 

Nevertheless, we have seen that it is a fundamental point in 
Theoretical Geology that there is no science in the Narrative of 
Creation ; that it was simply intended " to inform us by whom 
the world was made ;" that its language is addressed to the pop- 
ular opinions and ignorance of the primitive days; and that of 
these convenient assumptions " Science " predicates the right to 
interpret the language according to the suggestions or require- 
ments of its own hypotheses. This, indeed, has formed the main 
entering- wedge from immemorial time ; and I present the follow- 
ing quotation, not only that it may be seen how a writer upon the 
"Structure of the Globe" in the last century, while describing the 
attitude of Theoretical Geology at his own time, portrays the ad- 
vances it has made at the present day, but also for its admirable 
comments. Thus — 



THE NARRATIVE OE CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 497 

"The ambition of framing general systems tyrannizes the most 
sober heads, and attaches us to certain ideas, to which, without 
perceiving it, we strive to make all Nature pay homage, even 
where she's most stubbornly opposite." "To set her at variance 
with the assertions of a supposed inspired writer was no small 
object. The short account he has given us of the Creation runs 
counter to the opinions said to be framed on the unerring proofs 
of Nature by many celebrated philosophers." "Yet I am still 
aware that, however probable any explication of the first chapter 
of Genesis given or to be given may be, it will by some be per- 
emptorily rejected upon the old plea that, its language being 
adapted to the intelligence, or, in other words, to the vulgar prej- 
udices of an ignorant people, we are not there to look for that 
exactness and precision required in philosophical discussions 
where that science was never meant to be inculcated. But I will 
venture to assert that the veracity of its Author can not be screened 
tender the subterfuge of condescension to vulgar errors. He announces 
facts as positive truths. These are not alterable in compliance with 
language or opinions. If they are true, they may as yet be unre- 
solved, but can not be irresolvable by the real laws of Nature." — How- 
ard's History of the Earth and Mankind, &c, 1797. 

On contemplating the details of the Narrative of Creation, 
which has for many thousand years engaged the pens of the in- 
spired and the erudite, and received the sanction of our Lord and 
his disciples, I shrank almost instinctively from the magnitude 
of the inquiry when undertaken in my former work on Theoret- 
ical Geology ; nor should I have embarked upon it but from the 
conviction that I should not fail of detecting a very wonderful 
display of an exact philosophy, which is utterly beyond the con- 
ception of the most enlightened mind of the present day, and all 
embraced in 796 words; although covering the whole ground 
upon which Astronomy, Physiology, Chemistry, and all the nat- 
ural Sciences are founded, and surpassing them all in the precis- 
ion of its philosophy ; nor is there one superfluous word, one word 
too few, nor one misplaced. All this I have endeavored to make 
apparent. 

Among the variety of internal proofs of its Divine dictation 
with which the Narrative of Creation abounds, its extreme brev- 
ity is one of the most impressive ; especially when associated with 

32 



498 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

its precision, perspicuity, absence of all defense or explanation of 
what is intended for the faith of mankind, yet explanatory of any 
words of more than one meaning — as "morning and evening," 
" day," &c. — its limitation of all the details to the things of this 
earth, its exact and universal philosophy, its Unity of Design 
throughout all the details, the specific proof of its Divine Author- 
ity that is impressed upon particular statements — as those rela- 
tive to the Soul, the Principle of Life, the materials of which man 
was formed, &c. But to appreciate fully the evidence supplied 
by the compact brevity of the Narrative we must represent to 
ourselves what would have been the course of the writer had he 
been employed about a work of fiction, and this may be readily 
done by looking at the habits of all ancient and modern writers 
who have taken for their themes the sublime or romantic. The 
author of the Book of Job imbues his realities with poetic inspi- 
ration ; Homer, Virgil, &c, exhaust their own creations ; Milton 
elaborates into Paradise Lost a simple statement relative to Adam 
and Eve, and who shall tell the multitude of volumes that have 
been written upon the same text? The world has abounded with 
writers who have found their highest gratification and their best 
interest in addressing the imagination ; and yet here is a man 
of lofty genius employed about a Narrative of the beginning of 
all things — the Universe, the first appearance jof man and all or- 
ganic nature, the universal Flood, and the preservation in a vessel 
of more than 68,000 tons ; the origin of sin, &c, and yet it may be 
all read and understood in less than half an hour. And how, on 
the other hand, is it with Theoretical Geology when occupied with 
its "creations and extinctions," its "primordial cell," its "reign 
of insects," "reign of saurians," "reign of mastodons," "prehis- 
toric man," " the Stone Age," and whatever else will render the 
imagination tributary to its schemes ? These subjects have been 
expanded into volumes that would form a library of very impos- 
ing dimensions. In the mean time, for the simple reason that 
the bones of man, who has the sagacity and ability to avoid tor- 
rents of water or avalanches of land, are not found imbedded in 
the rocks, this earth is given over for millions of years first to a 
state of desolation, and then for other millions to a worthless oc- 
cupation by plants and animals, till within a few thousand years 
man is admitted upon the stage to wonder at the strange dispen- 



THE NARRATIVE OF CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOF. 499 

sation of Providence in having detained him so long from the en- 
joyment of those bounties which were alone intended for him. 
But when the Narrative of Creation shall be again restored to the 
confidence of mankind, the main foundation of modern infidelity 
will be " scattered to the winds." Such, however, is the nature 
of error and infidelity that, when once impressed upon the public 
mind, they can be arrested only by great revolutions; and I may 
reiterate now with greater apprehension than thirty years ago, 
that when nations have begun to trample upon the past, to reject 
its experience, and to strike out new systems of observing nature, 
it has been the most certain presage of approaching imbecility, 
and of that ultimate downfall to which all are destined. When 
the great revolution shall have reached the genius of Philosophy 
— ro KpariGTov Trig cpiXoGoQiciQ — the last phial of wrath is emptied, 
and that nation is irretrievably gone. 

A few years ago there came from Great Britain an encoura- 
ging voice in behalf of the Holy Scriptures. But how little has 
been the weight of conservative science as then exerted may be 
inferred from the preceding pages. As a memorial in behalf of 
our age, I shall contribute towards its preservation by transfer- 
ring to this work a summary view of what was then in progress 
among many leading British philosophers who were as earnest 
in behalf of science as of Eevelation, and which will be so infer- 
red from the following appeal, if not to a religious faith, at least 
to the dignit}^ of science. The declaration made its appearance 
in September, 1864, and was signed at that time by more than 
two hundred ; of whom thirty were members of the Eoyal Soci- 
ety, and forty of the Medical Profession. Here is the document: 

"We, the undersigned, students of the Natural Sciences, desire 
to express our sincere regret that researches into scientific truth 
are perverted by some in our own times into occasion for cast- 
ing doubts upon the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God 
as written in the book of nature, and God's Word written in 
Holy Scripture, to contradict one another, however much they 
may appear to differ. We are not forgetful that physical sci- 
ence is not complete, but is only in a condition of progress, and 
that at present our finite reason enables us only to see as through 
a glass darkly ; and we confidently believe that a time will come 



500 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

when the two Eecords will be seen to agree in every particular. 
We can not but deplore that Natural Science should be looked 
upon with suspicion by many who do not make a study of it, 
merely on account of the unadvised manner in which some are 
placing it in opposition to Holy Writ. We believe that it is the 
duty of every scientific student to investigate nature simply for 
the purpose of elucidating truth, and that if he finds that some 
of his results appear to be in contradiction to the written Word, 
or rather to his own interpretations of it, which may be erroneous, 
he should not presumptuously affirm that his own conclusions 
must be right, and the statements of Scripture wrong. Eather 
leave the two side by side till it shall please God to allow us to 
see the manner in which they may be reconciled ; and, instead 
of insisting upon the seeming differences between science and 
the Scriptures, it would be as well to rest in faith upon the 
points in which they agree." 

And where now is all this sound of alarm? Let the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science answer. Serious 
discouragements were at that time encountered, examples of 
which occur in the public protests which were made by Sir 
John Herschell and Sir John Bo wring when they declined 
their signatures to the appeal. 

But there is a far greater testimony on record — running 
through the Ages, and assuring us that, with rare exceptions, 
all the most eminent in ancient and modern times who have 
been truly endowed with genius, or have been informed in all 
the sciences, have ascribed the origin of animate and inanimate 
nature directly to the Creative Power of God, and in no respect 
to physical laws, and have avowed their belief in a Soul and its 
immortality. Moreover, in Christian times, the same class of 
mankind have been devoutly convinced of the truth of every 
part of the Holy Scriptures. The opposite party have been sci- 
olists. For the most part, they have simply misapplied the dis- 
coveries of others, and betray flagrant violations of logical rea- 
soning and an unrestrained imagination. Their cause is natural- 
ism, their criterion the compass of human intellect, their philoso- 
phy the creation of their own imaginations. Miracles, Creation 
by a Personal God, are not consonant with that philosophy, mere 
delusions upon human credulity. Voltaire they rightly claim 



THE NARRATIVE OE CREATION— ITS INTERNAL PROOE. 501 

as a man of genius ; but lie was " every thing by turns and noth- 
ing long." "Ever inconstant and wavering, he was a Free- 
thinker at London, a Cartesian at Versailles, a Christian at Nan- 
cy, and an Infidel at Berlin." Here, then, you say, is Laplace 
— eminent in science. But his scientific acquirements were lim- 
ited to Geometry and Astronomy ; and it was said of him by Na- 
poleon that — "He never viewed any subject in its true light; he 
was always occupied with subtleties; his notions all problemat- 
ic ; and he carried the spirit of the infinitely small into the Ad- 
ministration." Who would now respect Sir Charles Lyell's 
opinions upon any question relating to Creation or the Flood, 
after "abandoning, late in life [in behalf of Darwinism], the doc- 
trine of special creations, which he had for forty years regarded 
as one of the foundation-stones of a work that had given him the 
highest position attainable among scientific writers?" Again, 
the eminent Author of the Reliqidce Diluviance occupies the same 
position in having abandoned all his vastly-accumulated proof in 
behalf of the Sacred Narrative and applied it towards the specu- 
lations of Theoretical Geology. 

Finally, the Sciences have made such advances that innova- 
tions upon established principles can alone satisfy an inordinate 
ambition ; especially when the field to be explored demands the 
labor of many years. Consider what has been regarded as one 
of the most ready comprehension to serve as a basis for a stu- 
pendous system of laws — Geology. No one can pursue the in- 
quiry in its connection with fossil exuviae, and with a reference 
to scientific principles, or to the origin of living beings, without 
an intimate knowledge of Comparative Anatomy, and of the 
profound science of Physiology. With that knowledge he will 
at once perceive that the fossil remains represent nothing but 
what were once component parts of the present organic king- 
doms, and that in no circumstance whatever of an organic nature 
are they distinguished from the existing races of animals and 
plants. He would meet, also, with a labyrinth of facts and prin- 
ciples that would assure him as perfectly of the creation of man 
and animals in a state of maturity, both of body and mind, as he 
is conscious of his own existence. Or should the Geologist ad- 
dress his inquiries to the constitution of the Earth with a view 
to its origin, he must be conversant with the science of Chem- 



502 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

istrj ; and this would lead him to the knowledge that by no 
possibility could the primary rocks have emerged from a chaotic 
state into their organized condition through the forces and laws 
alone that are impressed upon matter, or from a state of igneous 
fusion. Moreover, with all this information he would readily 
perceive that Geology can aspire at nothing more than an accu- 
mulation of facts that may be converted to a variety of the most 
useful purposes, but which supply no foundation whatever for 
scientific laws or principles. But the Geologist, to accomplish all 
this, must look for amusements in laborious study. What is said 
by Tacitus of the Poet, in his Dialogue concerning Oratory, is far 
more applicable to the difficulties attendant upon the Sciences — 
even their individual pursuit, when studied in its connected rela- 
tions with others. " It must not be forgotten," says Tacitus, 
" that the Poet who would produce any thing truly excellent in 
the kind must bid farewell to the conversation of his friends; 
he must renounce, not only the pleasures of Eome, but also the 
duties of social life ; he must retire from the world, as the Poet 
says, ' to groves and grottoes, every muse's son.' In other words, 
he must condemn himself to a sequestered life in the gloom of 
solitude." 

Having now completed my last remaining object — an analysis 
of the Narrative of Creation — in behalf of the Soul, with the ex- 
ception of what will appear in the Appendices with a farther view 
to the literal interpretation of that Record, as well as of the Nar- 
rative of the Flood, I shall proceed to the demonstration of the 
Instinctive Principle, when other considerations will arise that 
go to confirm the substantive existence and self-acting nature of 
the Soul. 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS RESPECTING. 503 



CHAPTER XV. 

PHYSIOLOGY OF INSTINCT, ACCORDING TO DISTINGUISHED 
WRITERS. 

The opinions which have prevailed in regard to Instinct have 
generally been vague and hypothetical, with the exception of 
such as deny the existence of the Soul. Materialism knows no 
distinction, but attributes all their manifestations equally to the 
mere workings of matter. Of more equivocal doctrines the dis- 
tinguished J. Mason Good, M.D., supplies, in his "Book of Na- 
ture" a history of such as have been entertained, and of which 
the following is a summary : 

" There are various actions and trains of actions occasionally 
to be met with among mankind, but more frequently and more 
strikingly among other animals, which indicate the employment 
of certain definite means to obtain a definite end, without the in- 
tervention of that chain of thought which characterizes Reason, 
and which have hence been ascribed to a distinct principle that 
has been distinguished by the name of Instinct." " The modes of 
accounting for instinctive acts have been various, and in the ut- 
most degree unsatisfactory. In a general survey they may be 
resolved into three classes : first, those hypotheses which ascribe 
the whole to the operation of body alone ; secondly, those which 
ascribe it to mind alone ; and, thirdly, those which derive it from 
a substance of a mediate nature between the two, or attribute it 
partly to the one and partly to the other." 

"I. It was the opinion of Des Cartes that brutes are mere me- 
chanical machines ; that they have neither ideas nor sensation ; 
neither pain nor pleasure ; and that their outcries under punish- 
ment, and their alacrity in pursuing an enemy or devouring a 
meal, are produced by the same sort of force which, exerted upon 
the different keys of an organ, compels its respective pipes to give 
forth different sounds. And a great part of Cardinal Polignac's 
very elegant Latin poem, entitled Anti- Lucretius, is written in di- 



504 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

rect support of this whimsical hypothesis." " Under this view 
of the subject all instinctive actions were, of course, referred to 
a principle of body, or gross tangible matter, not endowed with 
peculiar or exclusive properties; and wherever any thing of the 
same description was to be found among mankind, it was instant- 
ly separated from all connection with intelligence, and referred to 
the same source." " The ideas of Dr. Eeid, who has expressly 
written upon this subject, do not appear to be very perspicuous ; 
yet he obviously espouses the doctrine of a mechanical principle 
of animal actions ; and the actions which are resolvable into this 
principle are, in his opinion, of two kinds, those of instinct and 
those of habit. Instinct is with him, therefore, as well as with 
Des Cartes, a property of body or gross matter alone, unendowed 
with any peculiar powers, and merely operated upon by a com- 
bination of mechanical forces. 

"II. In direct opposition to this corporeal hypothesis, Mr. 
William Smellie and Dr. Erasmus Darwin have contended that 
instinct is altogether a mental principle, the brute tribes possess- 
ing an intelligent faculty of the very same nature as mankind, 
though more limited in its range. From this point, however, 
these two physiologists disagree, and fly off in opposite direc- 
tions; the former contending that Eeason is the result of In- 
stinct, and the latter that Instinct is the result of Eeason. : ' 

" III. There is a third class of philosophers who, sensible of 
the difficulty of the case, have endeavored to get over it by con- 
tending that instincts are of a mixed kind ; that they either orig- 
inate in a power which holds an intermediate nature between 
matter and- mind ; or else are in some instances simply material, 
and in others simply mental. The learned Cudworth belonged 
to the first of these two divisions, and may be regarded as hav- 
ing taken the lead in the scheme which it develops. This pro- 
found metaphysician was so strongly attached to the Platonic 
theory of the creation of the world, that he strove, with the full 
force of his mighty mind, to restore this theory to general vogue. 
He conceived that all instinctive powers might be satisfactorily 
resolved into the operation of Plato's incorporeal form, or an act- 
ive plastic nature, which exists throughout the world independ- 
ently of pure mind and pure matter." "At the head of the sec- 
ond division of the last class of philosophers to whom I have re- 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS RESPECTING. 505 

ferred we may perhaps place M. Buffon, who, not choosing to 
allot to animals below the rank of man the possession of an in- 
telligent principle, kindly endowed them with the property of life 
— which Des Cartes had morosely withheld, by contending that 
they were mechanical machines alone — and very obligingly al- 
lowed them to possess a faculty of distinguishing between pleas- 
ure and pain, together with a general desire for the former, and 
a general aversion for the latter. And having thus equipped 
the different tribes of brutes, he conceived that he had sufficient- 
ty accounted for the existence of instinctive actions, by leaving 
them to the operation of this distinguishing faculty upon the me- 
chanical properties of their respective organs." (See Chapter 
VI., Equivalence of Forces) " M. Cuvier has taken a ground still 
different from any of these philosophers. He has not, indeed, 
expressly written upon the subject, but in a very accurate de- 
scription of a somewhat singular orang-outang he sufficiently un- 
folds his opinion that Instinct consists of ideas which do not origi- 
nate from sensation, but flow immediately from the brain, and 
are truly innate." 

Our Author, having thus set forth the diversity of opinions 
entertained by Philosophers as to the nature of Instinct, remarks 
that — " Nothing, therefore, is clearer than that the principle of 
instinct has hitherto never been explicitly pointed out, nor even the 
term itself precisely defined. It has been derived from mechan- 
ical powers, from mental powers, from both together, and from 
an imaginary intermediate essence, supposed equally to pervade 
all embodied matter, and to give it form and structure. It has 
been made sometimes to include the sensations, sometimes the 
passions, sometimes the reason, and sometimes the ideas. It has 
been sometimes restricted to animals, and sometimes extended to 
vegetable life." 

Our Author proceeds next to deliver his own opinion of In- 
stinct, which he designates as "a new view of the subject;" and 
it is remarkable that so good an observer, and so able a reasoner, 
avows his belief that the Instinct of animals is nothing more than 
" the operation of the Principle of Life," because they are not 
endowed with the rational faculty. Thus he says : 

"The law of Instinct, then, is the law of the Living Principle; 
instinctive actions are the actions of the living principle, which is 



506 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

either that power which characteristically distinguishes organized 
from unorganized matter, and pervades and regulates the former 
as gravitation pervades and regulates the latter, uniformly oper- 
ating by definite means, in definite circumstances, to the general 
welfare of the individual system or of its separate organs ; ad- 
vancing them to perfection, preserving them in it, or laying a 
foundation for their reproduction, as the nature of the case may 
require. It applies equally to plants and animals, and to every 
part of the plant as well as to every part of the animal, so long 
as such part continues alive. It is this which maintains from 
age to age, with so much nicety and precision, the distinctive 
characters of different kinds and species, which carries off the 
waste or worn-out matter, supplies it with new, &c. It is hence 
the strawberry travels from spot to spot, and the cod or the 
cuckoo, with a wider range, from shore to shore, or from climate 
to climate." 

The foregoing identification of Instinct with the Vital Princi- 
ple, and which has been advocated by others, was probably sug- 
gested by the precision with which the former operates. But it 
is essentially materialistic in respect to animals; and from what 
will be shown of the analogies between Instinct and Eeason, if our 
Author's construction had any just foundation, it would be appli- 
cable to man as well as to animals — an inference which he had 
not contemplated. There are, however, many fundamental dis- 
tinctions between the Principle of Life and Instinct ; one of the 
most obvious of which is, that the former is always moved into 
action by physical causes, and whenever they cease to operate 
the Principle of Life either perishes or becomes quiescent ; while, 
in respect to the Soul and Instinctive Principle, however much 
they may be brought into action by physical causes, as in sensa- 
tion, their action advances in manifold ways after the physical 
exciting causes are withdrawn and all sensation ceases. The 
Soul and Instinct are, also, as we have seen (Chapter II.), among 
the causes which bring the Principle of Life into action, as wit- 
nessed of the Will in voluntary motion, and of the Passions in 
their action upon the heart, blood-vessels, stomach, &c. This, 
however, is very different from the natural stimuli that are de- 
signed for Organic Life. The blood, for example, is the natural 
stimulus of the Principle of Life in the heart and arteries, and if 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS RESPECTING. 507 

the action of this stimulus be withdrawn life becomes at once ex- 
tinct. Moreover, the Soul, as in the processes of Eeason, may in- 
stitute its own actions, and in entire independence of any remote 
cause. This is also true of the Instinct of animals after it is ex- 
cited into action by suggestions coming to the brain from remote 
causes through the medium of the senses, and these suggestions 
may be of a very slender nature. Instinct, then, appropriates the 
suggestions, and carries them out according to its peculiarities in 
different species of animals. 

But while physical causes are indispensable to maintain the 
actions of the organism in plants and animals, and without which 
their life would perish, or at most can exist in a state of quiescence 
in the seed and egg only, they are in no respect necessary, by 
their direct action, to the maintenance of the Intellectual and In- 
stinctive Faculties, and in all their vigor. "While organic life is 
unimpaired, Eeason and Instinct may be perfectly quiescent, and 
yet summoned into action by causes which have no relation to 
organic life, as is always the case with impressions made upon 
the senses. Nay more ; while the organism is as much in motion, 
and excited to action by physical causes, during sleep as in the 
waking hours, the Soul and Instinct are invigorated by the ab- 
sence of all their peculiar exciting causes during the same period ; 
nor will the agents or causes which maintain the organs of organic 
life in the performance of their functions bring into action either 
Reason or Instinct. And I may advert again to the absence of 
all analogies between the results of rational and instinctive proc- 
esses and those of organic actions, and to the manifest limitation 
of the Soul and Instinctive Principle to the brain and nerves as 
the organs through which their functions are carried on ; while 
plants, which possess the same organic functions as animals, have 
no nervous system. From all which it is abundantly evident, 
and, as will farther appear, that the Instinct of animals is not only 
totally different from the Principle of Life, but, so far as now 
shown, evinces an alliance to the Rational Faculties of man. 

Among the variety of doctrines relative to Instinct, that of Dr. 
Hartley is worthy of attention. We have seen in Chapter V. 
that this eminent writer supposes that the phenomena of the Ra- 
tional Faculties depend upon vibratory motions in the brain and 
nerves, and he carries this materialistic explanation to the in- 



508 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

stinctive manifestations of animals. Thus, in his " Theory of the 
Human Mind" he says : 

"If the doctrines of vibrations and association be found suffi- 
cient to solve the phenomena of sensation, motion, ideas, and af- 
fections in men, it will be reasonable to suppose that they will 
also be sufficient to solve the analogous phenomena in brutes. 
And, conversely, it seems probable that an endeavor to apply and 
adapt these doctrines to brutes will cast some light and evidence 
upon them as they take place in men. And thus the laws of vi- 
brations and association may be as universal in respect of the 
nervous systems of animals of all kinds, as the law of circulation 
is with respect to the system of the heart and blood-vessels ; and 
their powers of sensation and motion be the result of these three 
laws, namely : circulation, vibrations, and association, taken to- 
gether." 

The eminent Mr. Lawkence, in his u Lectures on Physiology" 
supplies an example, in the following assumption and sophistry, 
of reasoning from the Instinct of animals to the materialistic doc- 
trine of the Soul. Thus he says : 

"If the intellectual phenomena of man require an immaterial 
principle superadded to the brain, we must equally concede it to 
those more rational animals which exhibit manifestations differ- 
ing from some of the human family only in degree. If we grant 
it to these, we can not refuse it to the next in order, and so on in 
succession to the whole series — to the oyster, to the sea-anemone, 
the polypi, the microscopic animalcules. Is any one prepared to 
admit the existence of immaterial principles in all these cases? 
If not, he must equally reject it in man" 

But Mr. Lawrence shall show the fallacy of his premises in 
imputing to animals manifestations of reason "differing from 
some of the human family only in degree ;" for, as in most cases 
where an Author is at fault about principles, Mr. Lawrence con- 
tradicts himself. Thus, in another place he says that — 

'Although the external senses of brute animals are not inferior 
to our own, and though we should alloiv some of them to possess a 
faint dawning of comparison, reflection, and judgment, it is cer- 
tain that they are unable to form that association of ideas in which 
alone the essence of thought consists" 

The distinguished chemical physiologist, Baron Liebig-, whose 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS EESPECTING. 509 

materialistic opinions have been noticed in Chapters IV. and VI., 
supplies in the following characteristic doctrine a good exempli- 
fication of the speculative views upon Instinct, and of the man- 
ner in which Instinct is confounded with Keason. When ad- 
verting to the action of tea and coffee, he says — 

" We must presuppose that if these stimulants did not satisfy 
some "powerful want of our organization, man would hardly take 
the trouble to seek them ; and that instinct should in so wonderful 
a manner, among a countless number of plants, choose just such 
as produce substances inducing the same effect, shows that one 
and the same gap exists in the nutrition of man in all countries and 
zones." 

It now remains to advert to the absurdity, in the foregoing 
quotation, of assimilating the physiological action of plants to 
man's imbibing propensity for stimulants, or in supposing that the 
luxuries of tea and coffee came into use through the promptings 
of Instinct. Our only farther comment is in the form of an in- 
terrogatory — whether our Author's philosophy is applicable to 
the analogous partiality for tobacco and alcoholic stimulants? 
What "powerful want of our organization," or what " gap in the 
nutrition of man," leads him "to take the trouble to seek them," 
and to consume them, "in so wonderful a manner?" 

It will now be interesting to observe the contrast to the fore- 
going opinions as supplied by other profound thinkers. Thus, 
Saint Pierre remarks, in his " Harmonies of Nature ," that — 

"Vegetable products possess nothing fit to be compared to the 
sensitive and intellectual faculties of animals. Yet some philos- 
ophers, among others Descartes and Malebranche, have presumed 
to rate the animal below the vegetable kingdom. They think 
proper to assert that animals are passive machines, and that it 
would be wrong to say the same of vegetables. When Male- 
branche was desired to account for the cries of a dog when 
struck, he thought proper to compare them to the sound of a 
bell when struck in the same manner. To prove this, he one 
day, in the heat of argument, unluckily killed, by a kick, his own 
bitch ; and Eousseau, in adverting to this eruel imprudence, said 
to me, 'When we begin to reason we cease to feeV The expres- 
sion throws a great degree of light on the nature of the Soul of 
beasts, and on ours, as far as their properties are in common. 



510 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

It shows that our Soul has two very distinct faculties — under- 
standing and feeling. The former arises partly from experience, 
the latter from the fundamental laws of nature. Both are in 
harmony in animals, and direct them to a good end." " But the 
Soul of animals is gifted with a faculty of more importance than 
its portion of sensation or intellect ; it has a kind of moral fac- 
ulty. Were not this the case, it would neither have will nor 
design, and would experience, without any effect, the impression 
of the sensitive faculty. By moral faculty I understand that 
which constitutes the habits of an animal ; that which gives a 
cat a different character from a mouse, and a wolf from a sheep. 
It is different in every genus of animals, and even in their spe- 
cies ; it unites three qualities — instinct, feeling, and action. In- 
stinct consists of the pre-sensations of an animal, or of a previous 
sentiment of what is suitable for it. By means of it the young, 
while still in the mother's nest, takes the alarm at a noise, or at 
the menace of a blow, although they do not know the injury by 
experience. It is by this previous sensation that they suck the 
breast, walk, leap, crawl, and call out for relief. They are in- 
debted to it, likewise, for the consciousness of the organs and 
members of which they make use. Animals are indebted to In- 
stinct, likewise, for a presentiment of their natural wants in oth- 
er respects. A spider, after coming out of its little egg^ does not 
need to wait till it has seen a model of a web before weaving its 
transparent workmanship ; it is seen at an early age crossing the 
threads, contracting them to try their strength, and doubling 
them where it is necessary, having a presentiment that the flies, 
which it has not yet seen, are destined to be its prey ; that they 
will be caught in the web, and that the struggle may be such as 
to call for a certain degree of strength in the texture of the ma- 
terials. Finally, there is no animal without a presentiment of 
the mode of life and industry which it is destined to exercise, 
alons; with the different ideas connected with it." 

Mr. Locke, in his work on the "Human Understanding" re- 
marks that — " I think I may be positive in this, that the power 
of abstracting ideas is not at all in animals ; and that the having 
of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction between 
Man and Brutes, and is an excellency which the faculty of 
brutes does by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS RESPECTING. 511 

no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for univer- 
sal ideas ; from which we have reason to imagine that they 
have not the faculty of abstracting or making general ideas, since 
they have no use of words, or any other general signs. And 
therefore I think we may suppose that it is in this that the Spe- 
cies of Brutes are discriminated from Man; and it is that proper 
difference wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last 
widens to so vast a difference. For if they have any ideas at 
all, and are nc*t bare machines, as some would have them, we 
can not deny them to have some Eeason. It seems as evident 
to me that they do, some of them, in certain instances, reason, as 
that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas, just as 
they received them from their senses. They are, the best of 
them, tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not, as I 
think, the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction." 

In a late u Address on Natural Religion" by Ealph Waldo Em- 
erson, as reported in the New York Daily Tribune of April 
17, 1869, it is said that — "In ignorant ages it was common to 
vaunt the human superiority by underrating the Instinct of other 
animals* Better discernment finds that the only difference is of less 
and more. Experiment shows the dog to reason as the hunter 
does; and all the animals show the same good sense in their 
humble walk that man, who is their enemy or friend, does; and 
if it be in smaller measure, yet it is not damaged, as his is often, 
by freak and folly." 

The analogies subsisting between Instinct and the human Mind 
are so strongly marked, and the organization of the brain is so 
nearly alike in all the higher tribes of animals, that we have 
only the alternative of regarding Instinct as a distinct Principle, 
endowed with the lower attributes of the Soul, or the manifesta- 
tions of the Soul as those of a higher order of Instinct. The 
latter alternative is the doctrine of the Materialist ; for it neces- 
sarily results from his assumed premises of the " correlation or 
equivalence of physical and vital forces," and the consequent 
application of the doctrine to the " conjoint action of the forces 
of matter and the materials of the brain as the only source of 
Thought." (Chapter VI.) The Materialist endeavors to fortify 
that assumption by comparing the brains of animals of the lower 
and higher orders, and their brains with man's, and then passes 



512 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

on to a comparison of the weight of brains of different races of 
men. The Negro is generally placed at the foot of the scale; 
though Professor Tiedemanjst, of Heidelberg University, who 
supposes that man and animals were developed out of " organic 
matter in a state of maceration in water " (page 176), decides that 
the brain of the black man is equal in weight to that of the Cau- 
casian, and that the main difference lies in the development of 
parts in the different lobes. Others have made the same affir- 
mation ; while some maintain the contrary. BtiCHNER declares 
that the brain of the Negro is " much smaller " than that of the 
white man ; and says of Instinct that — 

" The intelligence of the animal manifests itself entirely in the 
same manner as that of man. INTo essential difference, but only 
one in degree, can be proved to exist between Instinct and 
Eeason." " The best authorities in Physiology," he says, " are all 
now pretty much agreed that the Soul of Animals does not differ 
in quality, but merely in quantity, from that of man. Carl Yogt 
has recently again discussed and decided this question in his own 
striking manner, so that little that is new can be added." And 
our Author clinches this assertion by affirming that " Historic- 
ally, as in Ltayti, the Negro presents himself, to use the expres- 
sion of a writer in the Allgemeine Zeitung, half ape, half tiger." 
And " Burmeister," he says, "describes the Brazilian aborig- 
ines as animals in their actions, wholly destitute of any intellect- 
ual tendencies." "In the wilderness of Borneo and Sumatra 
and the Polynesian Islands," says Hope, "there are hordes of 
savages in whom no other mental capacity can be discerned but 
that low, brutish cunning ascribed to the apes." — Buchner, on 
Force and Matter. 

But place these Negroes and savages along with the ape and 
the tiger, under the same advantages of education — what then ? 
With a similar view to the materialistic doctrine, both as to the 
Soul and Instinct, it is said by Gorz that " the Cuban Negroes 
are very degraded in character, their moral feeling entirely unde- 
veloped;, all their actions proceed from impulse, or a cunning 
calculation of their own advantages." Burmeister saj^s of 
them : " I have often tried to obtain an insight into the mind of 
a Negro ; but it never was worth the trouble. The only valua- 
ble result obtained was, that there is not much mental life in the 



INSTINCT— OPINIONS RESPECTING. 513 

Negro, and that all his thoughts and actions are merely directed 
to the lowest requirements of human existence." 

Such are the expedients of Materialism in advancing its cause 
— reckless of the most common rights of humanity. And here 
it would be interesting, as well as instructive, to contrast with the 
foregoing degradation of the Negro his claims to an honorable 
and intellectual manhood as presented by his able advocate, the 
Abbe Gregoire, in his work "De la Literature des Negres, ou Re- 
cherches sur leurs Facultes Intellectuelles, leurs Qualttes Morales" &c. 
But our interest at present lies in ascertaining the views which 
are entertained of the Instinct of animals, and the facts which are 
brought to show its alliance to the human mind, or to consign it 
along with the Soul to the domain of matter. 

The Negro, however, is not the only argument which Material- 
ism arrays conjointly against the Soul and Instinct. Dr. Biich- 
ner seizes upon one half of the human race for the purpose of es- 
tablishing the doctrine by associating superiority of Mind with 
the greatest amount of brains, which he alleges are in possession 
of the male sex. This imputation calls out a Don Quixote (liv- 
ing at Zurich) in behalf of " woman's rights." Her defense is 
thus repeated by Biichner himself: 

"Dr. Schulz-Rodmer," he says, "combats our assertion regard- 
ing the greater weight of the male brain in relation to the female 
with the remark that, being a bachelor, we could know nothing 
empirically of such a relation. Such remarks may produce stu- 
pendous effects among rats and mice." — Force and Matter, Appen- 
dix to 4:th edition. 

Our Author, indeed, seems disposed to make little distinction 
between the best of us and plants. " Man has no right," he says, 
" to place himself proudly above the organized world, and to con- 
sider himself as a being of a higher nature." 

We have now seen enough of the diversity of opinions upon 
the nature of Animal Instinct to justify a more specific inquiry 
into its relations to the Soul, and in what respects they are dis- 
tinguished from each other, than was presented in Chapter II., 
under the demonstration of the Soul. 

33 



514 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



CHAPTER XYI. 

[E INSTINCTIVE PB 
TINCTION FROM THE SOUL.* 

Whatever was said as a matter of proof in my demonstration 
of the substantive existence and self-acting nature of the Soul, in 
Chapter II. , is equally applicable to the Instinctive Principle of 
animals, although there are many broad distinctions between 
them. These distinctions involve a critical analysis of the vari- 
ous phenomena of which they are predicated, both in their rela- 
tions to the Soul and to the mere Principle of Instinct. So much 
alike, however, are they in their physiological relations to the 
body that I have incorporated the essential facts and principles 
in my Institutes of Medicine, where they appear in their proper 
connections with the organic as well as the animal functions, and 
the influences which they exert upon those functions as exciting 
and modifying causes; by which, also, a clear demonstration is 
obtained between the mental and physical attributes, and of the 
substantive existence and self-acting nature of the Soul and In- 
stinctive Principle. (Pp. 873-911.) 

As we have seen (Chapter II.), the Eational and Instinctive 
Faculties, as commonly accepted, consist of judgment, reflection, 
comparison, imagination,, perception, understanding, will, memory — 
the whole, collectively, making up the properties of the Soul, 
while only the last four belong to the Instinct of animals. Al- 
though Mind is generally regarded as synonymous with Reason, 
I have applied the word indiscriminately to man and animals. 
The relations of the brain and nerves and of the nervous power 

* The distinctions which are made in this work between the Soul and Instinctive 
Principle, particularly that the latter is simply designed to subserve the uses of or- 
ganic life, were set forth in the original Edition, which was distributed extensively, 
and acknowledged in the literary journals, in 1848. The second Edition was pub- 
lished in 1849. This statement is made to protect myself against the imputation of 
having borrowed from others, who have adopted some of these views, what purports 
to be original with myself. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 515 

or influence to the Soul and Instinctive Principle, their conjoint 
influences upon the voluntary and involuntary organs, and other 
relative facts, have been also circumstantially indicated. "We 
have seen, too, that however much some acts of intellection in 
man may require the co-operation of the brain more than other 
mental processes, there can be no doubt that every act of Reason 
and of Instinct is the result of an inscrutable concurrence between 
the self-acting Cause and the organ over which it presides. It 
may be now said, also, that the brain is subservient to the Soul, 
independently of its relations to the body, in all its higher func- 
tions, while it manifests no such subserviency in animals; nor 
have I any doubt that all the facts warrant the conclusion that 
the nervous power is as well concerned in the functions of the 
higher faculties as it demonstrably is in the acts of the Will and 
the Passions. The instrumentality of the brain in the former 
case comes through the property of the Soul which is known as 
perception, and to which the senses are subordinate. The same 
property belongs, also, to animals ; and so far as mere sensation 
is concerned, or as it may give rise to volition in its simple rela- 
tion to animal life, the results are apparently the same in man 
and animals. But it goes no farther in animals, though in man 
Perception, as resulting from sensation, is the great fulcrum of 
Reason, and the fountain of intellectual knowledge. But that 
knowledge garnered up, every avenue to the mind may be shut, 
and the harvest of facts remains, and may be now multiplied, cul- 
tivated, embellished by the exercise of Reason alone upon the 
organ through which the elementary knowledge had come. It 
may now summon a host of intellectual images, and render them 
tributary to those abstruse processes by which the laws of the 
Universe are scanned, and Mind itself analyzed and understood. 
This is abundantly manifested in the early displays of genius, 
where knowledge from external sources is just in its dawn. It 
is fatal to the doctrine of cerebral images. 

There is a mysterious affinity between the Soul of man and 
the Instinct of animals, which is shown by the corresponding 
manifestations of perception, of understanding, and of the will in 
animals ; by the amazing precision with which their habits are 
regulated ; by the evidence of common passions ; by the coinci- 
dence in the external senses of man and animals, through which 



516 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

they alike acquire a knowledge of external things; by the paral- 
lel in the anatomical structure of the brain of man and of animals 
which stand high in the scale ; and by other analogies which de- 
note an affinity between the Soul and Instinct. So great and va- 
rious, indeed, are the evidences of the foregoing nature, that the 
special attributes of Instinct are associated with the human mind; 
thus forming a connecting link, through the moral faculties, be- 
tween rational and irrational beings. 

Nevertheless, the phenomena of the human mind are infinitely 
superior to those of Instinct, while the operations of Instinct in 
animals greatly surpass any of its manifestations in man. Many 
special peculiarities concur, also, in demonstrating an absolute 
distinction between the rational Mind and Instinct. The latter, 
for instance, always moves, in each individual species of animal, in 
a particular, unvarying path, but differently in each species of an- 
imal. It never diverges to improve its original endowments, or 
to add a gain which it did not possess in its infant condition. It 
is, then, nearly as perfect in its operations as at mature age ; nor 
does one generation of animals gain upon its predecessors. How 
different with Eeason, and with the Instinct of man ! He passes 
through early infancy without a trace of the former, and with 
only that helpless development of the latter which enables him, 
with the foreign aid of Eeason, to imbibe the sustenance required 
by organic life. Unlike the Instinct of animals, however, the cor- 
responding manifestations become greatly multiplied as age ad- 
vances; but it remains always far more circumscribed and im- 
perfect, and often plunging itself, and leading Eeason, into viola- 
tions of their natural functions. And what a contrast between 
the limitations of Instinct and the progress and grasp of the hu- 
man mind ; the latter forever ranging through all the labyrinths 
of nature, investigating their phenomena, developing their pow- 
ers, their subsidiary causes, and their laws ; turning in upon it- 
self and multiplying its knowledge, and enlarging its powers by 
its own independent efforts; laying up the gains of the past as a 
fruitful source of present good and of farther acquisitions; dis- 
tinguishing good from evil, from which results the sense of moral 
responsibility; investigating its own attributes, and attempting 
even its own nature, and tracing up its existence to a higher 
Power, as the Author of the Universe which was made for the 
contemplation and the enjoyment of Mind. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 517 

But no such phenomena ever marked the highest cultivation 
of Instinct. It is all Instinct with animals, while this Principle 
is only feebly shadowed forth in man. And this leads me to in- 
dicate the most fundamental distinction, in a physiological sense, 
between the Soul of man and the Instinct of animals ; nor am I 
aware of any well-founded exception to the distinction which I 
make. Among the latter, the whole sum of instinctive processes 
is limited exclusively to the wants and the uses of the tody. What- 
ever may be the fundamental cause, it is in complete operation 
at the moment of birth, when its dawning has scarcely begun in 
the human race.* It is as perfect and comprehensive in the Ant 
as in the Chimpanzee. Each species of animal, and all the in- 
dividuals respectively, carry out an ordained plan of existence, 
and this is the compass of their knowledge. From that particu- 
lar path Instinct never diverges. It has no higher aim in the 
brute than the mere perpetuity of organic life, and it never op- 
erates without manifesting effects, either active or passive, in the 
mechanism of animal life. That is its grand characteristic, and its 
broadest contradistinction from the mind of man. It terminates 
there ; and Beason, therefore, must prompt the conclusion that 
the Instinctive Principle perishes with the body. But how dif- 
ferent with the Soul, which spans the sciences, rolls up its vast 
acquisitions through all generations, and sees in itself the "Image 
of God." All its noblest functions have no relation whatever to 
the uses of the bod}^. The untutored savage has all the perfec- 
tion of organic life that is enjoyed by a Newton, and greater in- 
stinct. He may become a Newton without a gain to his physical 
wants, but with some loss of his well-disciplined instinct. Here, 
in the exercise of Beason, all physiological analogies fail, while 
every impulse of Instinct demonstrates its subordination to phys- 
iological laws. When Beason operates, there is no participation 
of the nerves, as in the case of Instinct, no influences seen upon 

* Galen relates that — "On dissecting a goat great with young I found an active 
fcetus, and having detached it, and removing it before it saw its dam, I earned it into 
a room where there were many vessels, of which some were filled with wine, others 
with oil, others with honey, others with milk, and others with other fluids ; while in 
others were grains and fruits. The young animal rose upon its feet and began to 
walk; then it shook itself; and afterwards scratched its side with one of its feet; 
then it began smelling at all the vessels that were in the room ; and when it had 
smelt them all, it drank up the milk." — De Locis, c. 6. 



518 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

any part of the organism. We look upon its manifestations as 
emanating apparently from itself alone. And since there is 
nothing in the manifestations of the Will when it operates alone 
in the processes of Reason that denotes any influence upon the 
animal mechanism, as is always the case in animals; and since, 
also, that influence is strongly displayed in man when the action 
of the Will refers to the organs of volition, this distinction be- 
tween its intellectual and physical functions corresponds exactly 
with my inductions in regard to the general constitution of the 
Soul, and the relation which it bears in other aspects to the 
body. Hence we may again conclude incidentally that, by par- 
ity of reason as it respects the uses of Instinct, the Soul, which 
in its highest faculties is useless to the body, will continue to ex- 
ist without the aid of organic life. And, if I may deviate for a 
moment from my physiological ground to final causes of a moral 
nature, I would refer to the manifest design of animals for the 
human race, as a farther proof of their absolute extinction when 
those ends are fulfilled ; and, on the other hand, to the noble 
and sublime objects of man in his no less obvious companionship 
with God, as equally conclusive of the perpetuity of his being. 

Nevertheless, the analogies between the Soul and the Princi- 
ple of Instinct are such that if one be a distinct, substantive, self- 
acting agent, so must be the other. But their great practical 
final causes, independently of our other facts, are broad, funda- 
mental distinctions between them; nor have these distinctions, 
within my knowledge, been hitherto indicated. It is only, how- 
ever, a display of the common law of analogies which prevails 
throughout organic nature. The coincidences and distinction 
between Reason and Instinct are far less remarkable than the 
corresponding analogies and distinctions which are supplied by 
organic life in its greatest extremes ; for there is not a single or- 
ganic function of a comprehensive nature performed by man that 
is not equally so by the lowest plant. With greater reason, 
therefore, should we argue the identity of Man and Plants than 
of the Soul and Instinct. 

I am finally conducted to other and still more definite contra- 
distinctions between the Soul and the Instinctive Principle, and 
where it will probably appear, also, that the brain co-operates 
less in the higher acts of intellection than has been commonlj^ 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 519 

supposed. But the Mind, in all its functions, is not only more 
or less dependent upon its associate organ, but the influences 
which it is capable of exerting upon it in consequence, and 
thence upon the whole organism, are among the facts which 
form a broad distinction between the Soul and the Instinctive 
Principle. Nor can it be doubted that the full exercise of the 
Mental Faculties, as well as of Instinct, requires, in a general 
sense, a natural condition of the brain or its equivalent ; and the 
greatest displays of the former are apt to be seen where the or- 
gan is developed beyond the common standard. To these gen- 
eral facts, however, there are important exceptions, several ex- 
amples of which, as arising from organic disease and injuries, 
may be seen in my Medical and Physiological Commentaries, vol. 
ii., p. 139, note. Equally true is it, also, that, from the co-opera- 
tion of the Soul and the brain in the processes of Eeason, excess- 
ive exercise of the Mind is felt injuriously in the organs of or- 
ganic life, and too often permanently felt. The proper develop- 
ment of the brain is, also, arrested ; and thus, in its turn, the 
Mind suffers a corresponding injury. Our general premises lead 
to this conclusion, and our primary schools confirm the principle 
in a lamentable amount of broken constitutions and smothered 
intellect. This, too, is one of our evidences of the substantive, 
self-acting nature of the Soul ; and although the Instinctive 
Principle is equally self-acting, we here come upon the remark- 
able distinction that nothing like the foregoing has ever been 
witnessed from the severest discipline of Instinct. The Soul 
alone supplies these phenomena; and, from its incessant opera- 
tion in undermining health, or disturbing the natural action of 
the organic viscera, it must be regarded as separating the Soul 
and Instinct widely from each other. 

And this leads us to observe another and greater distinction ; 
for, while the development of the mental faculties is retarded by 
overtasking the Mind in early life, just the contrary effect ob- 
tains in animals. By untiring zeal, and the lash of instruction, 
Instinct is often susceptible of influences in the infancy of ani- 
mals, and mostly then; but here, again, it is just the reverse with 
Eeason in the infancy of man. This distinction is also of a rad- 
ical nature when compared with the improvements of Eeason at 
later periods of life; for what has been supposed to be a " culti- 



520 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

vation of Instinct " is, in reality, no such thing, since it subserves 
no useful purpose, and manifests itself only under the special 
influences, respectively, by which the several impressions were 
originally produced. The "tricks," &c, of the animal, whenever 
there is a deviation from the natural operation of Instinct, re- 
quire suggestions from the associate causes. Unlike the im- 
provements of the Kational Faculty, the artificial conditions of 
Instinct do not operate without the excitements of the primary 
causes, or their equivalents, and then always in exact conformity 
with the nature of the external cause. In other words (for the 
distinction is important), Keason may act independently of re- 
mote causes; the artificial conditions of Instinct require the 
agency of such causes to bring them into renewed manifestations. 
In the former case the senses may not be interested; in the lat- 
ter, impressions must always be made upon sense (as in seeing 
and hearing), and transmitted to the brain, or some equivalent 
nervous centre, when Instinct will operate in an impulsive man- 
ner. It is only a display of those low analogies between In- 
stinct and the Soul to which I have referred. Imitation, in a 
higher sense, as seen in parrot-talking, belongs to the same prin- 
ciple. But in these cases it is more constitutional, on account 
of the natural prating of the bird. It thus becomes ingrafted 
upon its notes, and will therefore display itself as an offspring of 
nature, and as a matter of habit, and without any extraneous 
prompting. What is thus acquired from man by the parrot and 
magpie, and which has been supposed, even by Mr. Locke, to 
evince a rational faculty, is derived by other birds from other 
songsters, particularly by the American mocking-bird and cat- 
bird, who appropriate the notes of many other warblers. ISTow, 
there is nothing more in parrot-talking than in these last exam- 
ples, and the latter is just as much an evidence of a rational fac- 
ulty as the former. The examples go towards the illustration 
of our subject in showing how Instinct is adapted to the pecul- 
iarities of organization in different animals, while man, through 
his rational faculties, may originate an endless variety of vocal 
music, and construct languages for himself. 

Even the promptings of Instinct, which impel animals to search 
after food, whether for present or future use, have their origin in 
present sensations. What is prospective in this respect is just as 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PEINCIPLE. 521 

impulsive as migration, and as little allied to the course of Eea- 
son. The same physiological influences of hunger, in regard to 
immediate wants, operate in the infancy of man, though with 
none of that discrimination which distinguishes the infant animal ; 
for the human infant will as readily suck at all things else as at 
the breast. Its apparent instinctive impulses go no farther than 
the movement of the mouth ; and that is all the display of instinct 
it evinces, unless farther shown by its cries when hunger is un- 
appeased. 

Again : as soon as Eeason obtains its development, it displays 
an endless variety of inventions for the sustenance of life, which 
are wholly irrespective of associations with the original physi- 
ological incitements, but which must be forever a recurring cause 
to the animal. Whatever similitude may seem to exist between 
the acts of Eeason and the acts of Instinct in procuring food, or 
in providing for the future, organic influences are interested in 
the latter as often as hunger returns ; and, so far as the processes 
are dependent in animals upon the inscrutable constitution of In- 
stinct, they are contradistinguished from all the analogous mani- 
festations in man by their undeviating uniformity in animals, and 
according, also, to the species of animals, while, also, all the in- 
dividuals of a species pursue a common and uniform way. Thus 
many species lie in wait to entrap their food, and although vari- 
ously according to the nature of the species, all the individuals 
of a species act exactly in a certain way, while others pursue a 
different course, and neither takes forecast beyond the present 
sensation of hunger ; while in some species which subsist on veg- 
etable food, the principle operates seemingly after the sagacious 
manner of Eeason in providing for their future wants. 

And here we come upon another, and very broad distinction 
between the Soul and Instinctive Principle ; for, as admitted by 
all, the greater the development of the brain in man, so, in a gen- 
eral sense, are the manifestations of Eeason, and therefore a fore- 
cast in animals in laying up food, if at all allied to Eeason, should 
predominate in those which have the greatest amount of brain ; 
and here, if in any respect, there should be the greatest display 
of Eeason. But it is just otherwise with all the superior animals, 
who take no thought for the morrow what they shall eat ; while 
in the bee and ant, where there are only ganglia for the nervous 



522 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

centres, there is an anticipation of the future in providing for the 
young which surpasses any thing known of the human race. 
What variety, too, in the structures which they rear for their 
progeny, according to the particular species in each genus, but 
always the same with each species. And then the food — -just as 
methodically of a precise kind as the act of providing it. The 
whole history of the instinctive acts of the elephant or the dog, 
which far surpass those of the tribes of apes, may be written in 
an hour ; but Iluber found a good-sized book necessary for the 
amazing operations of the common honey-bee. He described the 
doings of a hive, and that description tells the precise history of 
all past and of all future hives. The diversified acts of this in- 
sect, and according as it may be queen, male, or drone, seem like 
the complex movements of some elaborate machinery, which, 
when wound up, runs on in one precise way till it runs down. 
And still more estranged from Eeason, and utterly beyond its 
grasp, is the return of the bee to its hive through miles of track- 
less air, and the unerring flight of the carrier-pigeon ; nor are 
any of the higher animals capable of this amazing achievement, 
which, also, grows immediately out of the physiological arrange- 
ments for acquiring food. And what is remarkably significant 
of Instinct as distinguished from Eeason, and shows that it is de- 
signed for the well-being of organic life, and goes to interpret the 
bee and other animals, is the fact that the spider weaves a web 
out of its own body to entrap flies for its food, and builds a dwell- 
ing-house within it.* But how vast the disparity between the 
brains of these animals, and their relative manifestations of In- 
stinct, the bee having only a simple ganglion. Contrary to the 
prevailing doctrine, we here meet with important anatomical con- 
ditions which denote a wide distinction between Eeason and In- 
stinct, and which render all our conclusions relative to the de- 
pendence of the superior mental endowments of man upon a 
greater elaboration of the brain than in animals, and a corre- 
spondence of the higher and lower grades of Eeason with the va- 

* It is an old observation that — " There be four things which be little upon the 
earth, but they are exceedingly wise. The ants are a people not strong, yet they pre- 
pare their meat in the summer. The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their 
houses in the rocks. The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands. 
The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." — Proverbs. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 523 

rieties in cerebral developments, inapplicable to the Instincts of 
animals. The greater development of the brain in the ascending 
series of animals is on account of their more complex organiza- 
tion than in inferior orders, especially the greater development 
of the senses and the greater rises of the voluntary muscles in the 
former than the latter. Nevertheless, those animals which pos- 
sess the greatest cerebral development manifest a greater variety 
of instinctive phenomena, and their faculties are more susceptible 
of educational influences than in the inferior orders ; but not at 
all so in the ratio of the proportional development of the instinct- 
ive organ. Some species of insects and of birds are capable of 
a degree of instruction closely approximating the greatest arti- 
ficial training of Instinct in the superior animals. 

Sensation appears to be, either immediately or remotely, a prin- 
cipal cause of the instinctive functions, while the abstract proc- 
esses of Season can be traced up, at best, only hypothetically 
to any connection with the senses. As a general fact, also, In- 
stinct is mostly brought into action by some present sensation 
when the action relates to the present interests of the individual, 
such as in relieving hunger, avoiding danger, seeking enjoyments, 
&c. But there is a forecast of Instinct beyond any such imme- 
diate exciting cause among those animals who provide for their 
future wants ; though it is evidently more associated with the 
sense of hunger than the same care for the future is in man. In 
the latter instance, indeed, this provident disposition belongs to 
the same genus of motives as those which prompt all his efforts 
at some future good ; and however much they may have been 
originally connected with sensation, they never operate in the 
methodical manner as with Instinct, and are accomplished through 
an endless variety of intellectual processes. 

But there are other phenomena of Instinct that are of more 
difficult analysis in tracing out the exciting causes ; such as the 
impulse which leads particular tribes of animals to Construct 
their nest and provide extraneous nourishment for their young — 
especially where both habitation and food refer to a distant fu- 
ture, as in the case of the bee — and the universal parental attach- 
ment ; though it can not be doubted that sensation is concerned 
as a moving cause. This is illustrated by the sense of uneasiness 
which the animal manifests when danger impends its offspring, 



524 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

or when separated from them. A still more difficult problem 
is the directing cause which enables animals to return in an un- 
deviating course to their distant home, or to a milder climate; 
though this, also, depends upon associations connected with pres- 
ent and former sensations — as a sense of hunger, attachment to 
offspring, or such as arise from vicissitudes of temperature. 
They have in some degree corresponding analogies in man. 
But in the latter case all may be the result of contingent cir- 
cumstances, or a variety of incongruous motives, and of deliber- 
ate action. In one case the movements are methodical, and vo- 
lition operates in obedience to special promptings of sensation. 
In the other it is untrammelled, and is determined by the reflect- 
ive powers. 

The correspondence between the peculiarities of Instinct and 
the mechanism in animal and organic life is so remarkably full 
and perfect in design, and so different from the manifestations of 
the human mind in their connection with the organs and func- 
tions of either division of life, that a glance at the former will 
contribute farther aid in distinguishing the Soul from the In- 
stinctive Principle, and in proving the absolute existence of In- 
stinct as a distinct essence of the brute creation. If we may any- 
where detect the rational faculty among animals, it should be 
in the phenomena that are relative to their means and modes of 
subsistence. 

Now it will be found that in every species of animals the 
promptings of Instinct in the pursuit of food have a direct re- 
lation to the peculiarities that exist in the organization of the 
stomach, and the modifications of the special endowments of the 
digestive fluid in each of the species, by which one is enabled to 
convert flesh, another nuts, another hay, &c, into one homogene- 
ous substance called chyme, and which, from man to the lowest 
tribes of warm-blooded animals, at least, is apparently alike in 
all, whatever the nature and the variety of the food. But the 
agreement between man and animals is limited to that result in 
its connection with the digestive apparatus, and as it relates to 
the maintenance of organic life. What is true of the precise 
adaptations of Instinct to the organic conditions, and its invaria- 
ble operation in one way, according to the nature of the animal, 
is in no way true of the human mind; for the latter operates, in 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 525 

this respect, according to acts which, involve the exercise of judg- 
ment, reflection, comparison, &c, and very variously, also, ac- 
cording to individual suggestions of Eeason, Passion, love of 
sensual gratifications, the exigencies of disease, &c. 

Since, therefore, Instinct has its special constitution conform- 
ing to the organization of the stomach and the peculiarities of 
the gastric juice, we shall see how far it is related in its peculiar- 
ities to other varieties in the mechanism of organic life, by con- 
sidering how all these varieties in every species, respectively, 
have an equally direct reference as the peculiarities of Instinct 
to the special organization of the stomach, and special constitu- 
tion of the gastric juice. If, therefore, such be the relation of 
the whole mechanism of animals, both organic and animal, to 
the special condition of the stomach and gastric juice in their 
adaptations to the varieties of food in the several species, it is 
obvious that Instinct in all the species, respectively, must be con- 
stituted with a corresponding reference to every part of the or- 
ganic whole. Now, an intestine, claw, hoof, tooth, or any bone 
of an unknown animal being given, we may construct a skele- 
ton, say from the bone, that shall be true to nature in all its 
parts. We may thus proceed to cover it with muscles, provide 
it with claws or hoofs, and special kinds of teeth, &c, and, lastly, 
we can tell from that tooth, or claw, or hoof, or other bone, 
what was the structure of the digestive apparatus, and to what 
kind of food the gastric juice was specifically adapted, and what 
were the peculiar instinct and habits of ttfe animal ; so special 
is the adaptation of all other parts of the organism, both in ani- 
mal and organic life, to the peculiarities of the stomach in every 
species, and so exactly conformable are the instincts and habits 
of animals to all that vast range of physical peculiarities in the 
several species respectively. 

The foregoing is also true of man as it relates to organization. 
But who could surmise from any part, or from the whole of his 
organism, that he is endowed with Eational Faculties, or with 
any thing more than what is common to brute animals ? Here 
begins, abruptly, a total distinction between man and animals — 
nothing whatever in the mechanism of either to denote the end- 
ing of one or the beginning of the other. Nothing, indeed, but 
analogy, founded upon observation, enables us to affirm with 



526 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

certainty the same principles of extinct species of animals. 
Nothing but observation informs us of either the physical or 
mental functions ; for neither could have been deduced from 
structure alone. And yet analogy is so perfect a guide where 
the continuity of the chain is unbroken, that no error can arise 
in scanning the Designs of Infinite Wisdom, so far as they are 
submitted to human inquiry. But analogy in relation to In- 
stinct snaps in man. This might render it difficult, if not im- 
possible, to know the great fact, had all the species of quadruma- 
nous animals become extinct before man began his observations 
in natural historjr. The subsequent discovery of the skeleton 
of a chimpanzee would doubtless have been regarded as an un- 
answerable proof that there had been, at least, other beings upon 
earth besides the human race who had enjoyed the prerogatives 
of Eeason, and so a descending analogy imagined down to the 
polypi. But, the chimpanzee is a thousand times less endowed 
with Instinct than the honey-bee ; and we have seen that the 
sense of instinctive promptings throughout all animal tribes is 
concerned about objects which Eeason regards as only tributary 
to those immeasurably higher occupations of the Soul which 
have no relation whatever to those of the Instinctive Principle. 

However the foregoing branch of our inquiry may be pursued, 
it will always result in the same uniform way. Consider, for 
example, the correspondence between the instincts of animals 
and their weapons of offense and defense ; each species of ani- 
mals, and all the individuals of a species, acting defensively or 
offensively according to the special weapons with which they 
are provided. These means of preservation have a direct refer- 
ence to organic life, and Instinct, therefore, is adapted to the na- 
ture of the means. The various provisions are not only such as 
are actively employed, both for the purpose of procuring food 
and for self-preservation, like the weapon of the sword-fish, 
claws, the poison of serpents, &c, but others for the simple ob- 
ject of self-protection, such as horns, the quills of the porcupine, 
the armor of the rhinoceros, the sting of bees, the galvanism of 
the electrical eel, the ink of the cuttle-fish, &c. The same prin- 
ciple is seen in the instantaneous manner in which defenseless 
animals recognize others of predatory habits. Again, certain 
animals, and many of them of inferior orders, as some species of 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 527 

cockroaches, some of worms, and spiders, often affect the ap- 
pearance of death when closely pursued ; and when this is seen 
in one animal, it is, as in the preceding cases, common to all the 
individuals of the species. Many other animals that keep near 
the ground are protected by their color, and the animal, when 
alarmed, lies close. In all the cases there is a manifest unity of 
designs which conspire together for the well-being of organic 
life. Whatever may be the means of defense, of offense, of 
flight, or of whatever variety or modification, they are adapted 
to all the mechanism in animal life, to special sensation, &c, and 
according to the whole will be the special promptings of In- 
stinct. 

Fear, therefore, operates in animals impulsively, while in man 
it is the result of judgment, reflection, comparison, and his modes 
of defense are suggested accordingly. Observe, also, another fact 
relative to fear, which equally separates Instinct from the Soul. 
The young animal will turn from danger about as impulsively 
as the adult, while the human infant will thrust its hand into 
the blaze of a candle sooner than it will seize the nourishment 
that is simultaneously offered. In animals, indeed, the most ex- 
quisite sensitiveness to danger prevails, transcending even the 
promptings of hunger. Its predominance is designed alone for 
the preservation of organic life, and such are their exposures, 
and so limited their conceptions, that it is made to operate with 
great uniformity and instantaneousness. In man, on the con- 
trary, its impulses are comparatively feeble and slow, and so far 
as it obtains, it aims at a variety of objects which are determined 
by the decisions of Eeason. The principle, in animals, is evi- 
dently allied to that characteristic which directs their migrations, 
and the homeward flight of the bee. 

The manifest dependence, in man, of a sense of danger, and 
his expedients for self-protection, upon the rational faculties, has 
led to comparisons of certain instinctive perceptions of danger in 
animals, with a view to the identity of Instinct and Eeason, of 
which one of the strongest is often seen in the elephant on cross- 
ing a bridge, or embarking on a steamboat, as he first presses the 
bridge or the boat with a single foot to learn their stability. 
But this example is peculiarly adapted to our purpose, since In- 
stinct is here constituted with a reference to the weight of the 



528 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

animal, who would be otherwise exposed to frequent injuries; 
and the associations that are indispensable to safety are early 
formed. But they go no farther, and this particular demonstra- 
tion is seen only in animals that may break a bridge or sink a 
boat. It is, therefore, only an instance of the ordinary impulsive 
associations which are always in operation in cases of danger, 
and is exactly similar to the careful tread of the smooth-shod 
horse when about stepping upon ice, or the wariness of the fox 
and the rat in eluding the trap, or the various expedients of the 
squirrel in dodging the sportsman, or the cautious nibble of the 
fish, &c. The varieties in these examples are almost as great as 
the species of animals, and they all belong to the exquisite in- 
tuitive principle which warns them of approaching danger. It 
is often seen, indeed, in the aspect of mutual protection among 
animals of the same species, when it always operates according 
to the nature of the species. The crow has his sentinel, and the 
affrighted ant communicates its alarm by a peculiar touch of its 
companion, which spreads with rapidity from one to another, till 
the whole hive is quickly thrown into this paroxysmal move- 
ment. And now, if this analysis be pursued through an obvious 
series of analogies, it will be found that the habits of bees in re- 
lation to their queen, and many other remarkable problems in 
the history of Instinct, are allied to the principle which I have 
just considered. 

Another shade of difference in the general principle occurs in 
an example which has been presented by metaphysicians to il- 
lustrate the supposed identity of Instinct and Eeason. It is that 
of a dog, who has appeared, when making for a drifting boat, to 
lay out the plan of first ascending the bank of a stream above 
the boat, that the distance between himself and the object may 
compensate for the motion of the water, which would otherwise 
carry him below his destination. I present the example in its 
strongest light, and as implying all that can be surmised of a ra- 
tional process in animals. But, with all instances of a similar na- 
ture, it falls within the common laws of the Instinctive Principle, 
which are just so far operative, according to the species of animal, 
as shall subserve the exigencies of life. In the case of the dog, 
this animal is more or less addicted to the water (especially the 
individual in question), and his instinct is therefore adapted to 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 529 

the emergencies that may attend that temporary mode of life. 
He early acquires, in consequence, an impulsive apprehension 
of the effects of strong currents of water, and is so far capable of 
forming associations as may be necessary to his safety, or to his 
natural wants. The instance of the boat is one of safety and of 
want, and is exactly parallel with that where all dogs will elect a 
bridge of 500 feet in preference to swimming the width of a doz- 
en. The knowledge of the effects of a current of water exceeds 
but little that of its quality of wetting ; and when, therefore, a 
dog is moved by the desire of bathing, he neglects the bridge 
and takes to the water. Various prejudices and misapprehen- 
sions relative to supposed instinctive acts abound in the com- 
munity, who are prone to the most favorable comparison of the 
brute with his lordly associate. The rarity of apparent evidences 
of Eeason in brutes, and the enjoyment of what is thus unexpect- 
ed and wonderful, lead the multitude to seize upon what is acci- 
dental and carry it to the account of Instinct. An example of 
this, which has often gone the round of the public, is that of the 
elephant and the apple, where the tempting morsel, being just 
beyond the grasping range of the animal's trunk, was made, by a 
forcible projectile blow, to rebound within its reach from an op- 
posite wall. This has been thought to be but little inferior to a 
game at billiards. But it was simply an act of irritation, the 
blow being designed in the same resentment as when an angry 
man loses all reason and castigates a stone that has caused him 
an injury. 

The following supposed illustration of the endowment of ani- 
mal instinct with the rational faculties is of more doubtful au- 
thority than the preceding ; especially as the observation is con- 
fined to a single witness. Nevertheless, should it be confirmed 
by others, and of a flock of crows far short of a "hundred," 
there will be no question of the possession of reason by crows 
at least. The story comes from Darwin (I mean Erasmus 
Darwin), who relates it in his " Zoonomia" Thus — 

" On the northern coast of Ireland a friend of mine saw above 
a hundred crows at once preying upon muscles. Each crow took 
a muscle up into the air twenty or forty yards high, and let it 
fall on the stones, and thus by breaking the shell got possession 
of the animal. A certain philosopher, I think it was Anaxago- 

34 



530 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ras, walking along the sea-shore to gather shells, one of those 
unlucky birds mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a 
shell-fish upon it, and killed at once a philosopher and an oyster." 

But here is an instance, from the same Author, apparently 
similar to the foregoing, yet widely different from it, as it sim- 
ply illustrates the educational acquirements of which instinct is 
capable. "There is," says Dr. Darwin, "at this time an old 
monkey shown in Exeter Change, London, who, having lost his 
teeth, when nuts are given him takes a stone in his hand, and 
cracks them with it one by one, thus using tools to effect his 
purpose, like mankind." 

In connection with these examples Dr. Darwin relates another, 
which will be readily accepted as within the province of Instinct. 
" Miss M. E. Jacson," he says, " acquainted me that she witnessed, 
this autumn (September 1, 1794), an agreeable instance of sa- 
gacity in a little bird, which seemed to use the means to obtain 
an end. The bird repeatedly hopped upon a poppy-stem, and 
shook the head with its bill till many seeds were scattered ; then 
it settled on the ground and ate the seeds, and again repeated 
the same management." Such knowledge is readily acquired 
by Instinct, and as the result of accident. The seed falls when 
the bird alights upon the plant, and thus the bird acquires a 
knowledge of the mode of disengaging it; though in most of 
these instances the animal is making a direct attempt at procur- 
ing the seeds as when a squirrel opens the shell of a nut. The 
example, in other respects, is of the same nature as of the squir- 
rel in detaching nuts from trees, some of which he seizes, but a 
large proportion escape and fall to the ground, which, like the 
bird in the case of the seeds, he subsequently appropriates. 

Turning now to the doctrine of the equivalence of Mind and 
the physical forces, we find that the best example which Buch- 
NER produces, in his work on "Force and Matter" of his alleged 
proofs of the identity of the human and animal mind relates to 
the ape. 

"At what distance," he says, " stands the Negro from the Ape ? 
The Author saw, in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp, an ape 
who had a complete bed in his cage, into which he placed him- 
self at night, covering himself up like a man. He performed tricks 
with hoops and balls, turning all the while towards, the spectators 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 531 

as if lie was anxious to show them his arts. He also followed 
with his finger the shadow which he cast upon the wall." 

I have witnessed greater demonstrations of the discipline of 
Instinct than the foregoing. I have seen a pack of playing-cards 
upon which were all the letters of the alphabet, and figures from 
to 9, distributed indiscriminately, "upside down," in a circle of 
ten feet in diameter, a dog in the centre, and his master seated 
near the outside of the circumference. I have heard propound- 
ed to the dog the combination of the letters into words, and 
of the figures into certain numbers consisting of five or six 
units. The dog would promptly start upon the fulfillment of 
his task. He revolved repeatedly around the circle while select- 
ing the letters or the figures in their proper order, turned the in- 
scribed faces of the cards to the eyes of the spectators, and ar- 
ranged them, without a mistake, into the required combinations. 
No "Negro" can accomplish such a feat; neither could our Au- 
thor. But the dog depended entirely upon the Keason of his 
master, using only his own Instinct in obeying a certain sign 
given by the master when he reached the cards necessary to the 
solution of the problems. The dog's nose swept around nearly 
in contact with the cards, while, by a gradual turn of the head 
and body as he revolved in the circle, his eye was constantly di- 
rected towards his master, who, as often as the dog arrived at the 
necessary card, moved a handkerchief in his hands. 

And just so was it a matter of instruction in the case of our 
Author's story of the Ape — the disciplinarian being seated along 
with the spectators at the Zoological Garden at Antwerp — "the 
ape turning all the while towards " his teacher. It is, however, 
a simple affair compared with the foregoing successful plan of 
the master and his dog to cheat the senses of the spectators at 
the expense of their reason. 

I have been also the witness of a far greater delusion in the 
case of a supposed Clairvoyant, a blind colored woman, at one of 
the museums in New York. Besides the object of imposing a 
belief in her endowment with supernatural mental powers, it was 
intended to demonstrate, at the same time, the minute details of 
Phrenology by rubbing the "bumps" in a particular direction 
for the development, in preternatural force, of the imputed facul- 
ties, respectively. A friend and myself had been invited by the 



532 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

manager to witness the performance, and were initiated into the 
modus operandi. The other, but uninformed, spectators, consist- 
ed of about sixty gentlemen of scientific and literary pursuits. 
Several apparently very marvellous revelations were made, which 
were generally received as the result of omniscience, and as such 
the event has been incorporated in history. The manager con- 
ducted the performance mostly by whispering at a foot or two 
from exquisitely sensitive ears, while the sound was inaudible to 
three or four others who were standing upon the stage near to 
the performers. 

Another anecdote may contribute towards dispelling these de- 
lusions. I have seen a lion go through with all the details of a 
dying pig when death is produced by thrusting a knife into the 
throat. The keeper simply told him to imitate the pig, and then 
exclaiming, "Now you are stuck!" the lion gave a growl, and 
began his dying movements, and carried them through in the 
most perfect manner, reeling in the same increasing way, then 
falling upon his knees, struggling to rise, and falling again and 
again, till apparently no longer capable of the effort, and, groan- 
ing piteously, he fell upon his side, the struggle still gradually 
failing, till he rolled upon his back, his jaws widely open, and his 
whole appearance denoting death. The keeper then exclaimed, 
"Are you sure you are dead ?•" — when the lion sprang upon his 
feet with a tremendous roar. This is also an example in which 
the acts of the animal were more or less suggested by slight 
movements of the master, and occasionally a word, though scarce- 
ly attracting the attention of the spectators. 

The Speculatist points to the care with which animals provide 
for their young, and the great resemblance between them and 
man in parental attachments, as an evidence of the supposed 
identity of Eeason and Instinct. But I answer that this is much 
more seeming than real, and that however the principle may 
have an ultimate reference to the well-being of organic life in 
the infancy of man, it embraces in him far loftier objects, and 
prompts to an endless variety of useful purposes in the care of 
his progeny which have not the least connection with the exi- 
gencies of life, but which, on the contrary, are relative to the cul- 
ture, the enjoyments, the morality, the religion, the eternal wel- 
fare of the spiritual part. It follows them through all the stages 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 533 

and vicissitudes of life, rejoices in their happiness, and grieves for 
their adversities. When intercourse fails, every expedient is de- 
vised, from the tardy messenger to the electric telegraph, to im- 
part renewed expressions of affection, and fresh hopes of prosper- 
ity. And how is it on the part of the offspring ? Does not ev- 
ery heart beat responsively to the Divine command to " honor 
thy father and thy mother?" And can there be a broader dis- 
tinction between the attachments of animals and of mankind than 
what Scripture implies and what man pursues ? The very at- 
tachments which man contracts for favorite animals flow from 
the Divine sentiment which is impressed upon his Soul. And 
then all that display of sympathy and friendship among compan- 
ions of mutual thoughts, or of heartfelt kindness towards the 
faithful and trusty servant, or the universal characteristic known 
as the sentiment of humanity — where, I say, shall we look for 
the dawning of these mental attributes in the constitution of In- 
stinct? And wherein are the instinctive movements of animals 
towards their offspring related to human affections ? Simply for 
the preservation of life, and thus, incidentally, for the perpetua- 
tion of the species, as conclusively shown by the total and abrupt 
disappearance of brute attachments as soon as the offspring can 
provide for and protect themselves, and this, too, at ordained 
times according to the species of animal. Nay, more; parents 
and offspring mutually abandon each other at allotted times, and 
turn upon each other. The principle is seen in full operation, 
and in its largest extent, in the bird while hatching her eggs. 
She may be in expectation, though she may have had no more 
experience in the final result than the bee on its return after its 
first wandering from the hive; nor is there any more similitude 
with the operations of reason in the one case than the other ; she 
will as readily sit upon counterfeit eggs as her own till her time 
of "reckoning" is up, and then abandon them. 

The same distinction exists between the love of the sexes in 
the human race and what is observed of the sexual relations in 
the brute creation, and is not less opposed than our other facts to 
the assumed identity of Eeason and Instinct. Like all else in re- 
lation to the latter, the impulse is totally restricted to the perpet- 
uation of organic life. In the human species the same impulse 
is as a spark in a blaze of fire. The principle of love takes in 



534 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

its scope the loftiest sentiments of Mind, and anticipates all the 
intellectual endearments of domestic society, and yields a grate- 
ful tribute to its munificent Author. If there be a low analogy, 
it is of the lowest grade, and is nearly lost in the sublimity of its 
intellectual accompaniments. Nor can there be a parallel sug- 
gested between Keason and Instinct more degrading to man, or 
more unjust to his Maker, or more characteristic of a perverted 
mind, than that which is so often drawn in respect to human and 
brute affections. Yet he who makes it has a better opinion of 
himself, and only thinks so of the rest of his race. 

And this leads me to speak of the very remarkable distinction 
between the Soul and Instinctive Principle, known as Conscience. 
I employ the term in its popular acceptation, as meaning the 
ability and the impulse of man to decide on the lawfulness or un- 
lawfulness of his own actions and affections, and to instantly ap- 
prove or condemn them, according to their nature. Nothing like 
this has ever been observed in animals. It is purely intellectual, 
and has a clear reference to the moral, religious, and social con- 
dition of the human race. It may be said, however, to be ap- 
parent in some animals, as when the dog, for example, manifests 
a sense of wrong when he surprises the game in a manner op- 
posed to his instruction, or does other analogous acts. But this 
manifestation happens only under the influence of those physical 
causes which led him to act more habitually in a different manner. 
The sense of wrong does not originate from the act, or on account 
of the act, but is excited by the presence of his master, whom he 
associates with frowns or the suffering which he endured when 
his Instinct was undergoing discipline, and thus resolves itself 
into a dread of punishment. It is, therefore, exactly analogous to 
all the other functions of Instinct which I have indicated, and 
forms the limit of associations of which animals are capable. 

And what shall be said of that other principle, scarcely less 
universal and impulsive than conscience — a love of Fame and a 
desire to live in the memory of posterity ? The question becomes 
ridiculous in its application to animals, and is hardly less so, in 
an abstract sense, as it relates to man. But, as an incentive to 
laudable action, it is a noble offspring of Keason, and as significant 
of the Soul's immortality it rises into sublimity. 

And what of Religion? What of the universal desire of im- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 535 

mortality? What of a sense of dependence upon a Superior 
Being? It may be safely affirmed that animals have no other 
knowledge of their own existence than what arises from present 
sensations ; and should a chimpanzee be seen bowing even to an 
idol, it would be a greater phenomenon than the expostulation 
of Balaam's ass. 

Even Memory, as it belongs to animals, is nothing but an asso- 
ciation awakened by some present impression upon the senses. 
It is brought into operation by any impression coming through 
the senses, as from a glance at an object, or perhaps only some 
momentary sound, with which a habit, or only some former ac- 
tion, or some want, or a pleasurable sensation, is associated ; or, 
from internal sources, as hunger, thirst, &c. If there be an ap- 
parent display of reflection, as in a series of consecutive acts 
without any immediate relationship, they appear to be suggested 
by the sensations as they arise in a consecutive series, and to de- 
pend much upon education. Indeed, Memory is so indispensable 
to many of the wants and habits of animals, it is pronounced so 
strongly in many species that they will recognize objects after a 
separation for long intervals of time, particularly where strong 
impressions had been made, as between the dog and his master, 
and wild beasts and their former keepers. In man, on the con- 
trary, memory is often relative alone to acquirements which the 
mind has made through its own processes of reflection, and they 
may be as vast and profound as the elaborate inductions which 
led to the discovery of the universal law of gravitation, and 
thence to the calculation of the existence of the planet Neptune. 
Nor does memor}^, in man, require any extraneous aid, like the 
apparently corresponding function in animals. It is a rational 
function in one, independent of sense ; an instinctive one in the 
other, and dependent upon sense. In one, it always involves an 
exercise of Eeason, and often a vast complexity of ideas ; in the 
other, it is simply relative to the single impression which had 
been transmitted to the brain by some external cause, and which 
can be recalled only by renewed applications of the same or anal- 
ogous causes. By extending the analysis in this manner, it will 
be seen that it is all Soul in man, and all Instinct in animals. 

But the most curious problem in the history of Instinct is its 
natural mutations in certain animals, and which carry with them 



536 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

an abundant proof of the radical distinctions between that prin- 
ciple and the Soul, and that the former is designed for the mere 
purposes of organic life. I shall, therefore, give to the subject a 
greater consideration than would be otherwise expedient. 

This characteristic is seen especially in animals that are sub- 
ject to metamorphosis, though in many of the instances the 
changes of organization and the modifications of Instinct are far 
greater than in others. The strongest examples occur in insects, 
a large proportion of which have four stages of existence : the 
egg, the larva, the pupa, and the imago, with corresponding in- 
stinctive habits in the last three. Where the metamorphoses are 
most remarkable, as in the foregoing examples, some of the or- 
gans undergo mutations that require a change in the stimuli of 
life which could not be realized without corresponding adapta- 
tions of Instinct. This is also more conspicuously illustrated by 
the difference in the wants and habits of those animals which at 
one period breathe in the water with gills, or analogous organs, 
and subsequently in the air with lungs. 

ISTow these metamorphoses are as much the exact result of de- 
terminate laws, ingrafted upon an original constitution of life, as 
the development of the human ovum, or the seed of a plant; nor 
are they in any respect more fluctuating or less circumscribed ; 
and so a corresponding law obtains in respect to Instinct, through 
which the promptings of Instinct shall harmonize with those 
modifications of organic life that distinguish the several stages 
of metamorphosis. In all the cases, from the plant to the insect, 
and from the insect to man, the metamorphoses or other develop- 
ments and modifications of life, take place in one uniform way, 
according to the species of animal or plant. A potential whole, 
embracing all the special conditions necessary to the progressive 
changes from the ovum, through the larva and pupa to the fly, 
and in all analogous instances, is as perfect in the most mutable 
tribes as in the ova of the highest order of animals, or in the 
seeds of plants ; and, since there can be no departure from a pre- 
cise and uniform succession of developments in any of the spe- 
cies respectively, we also learn that there is no transmutation of 
species, nor even an introduction of varieties. (See Chap. VII.) 

In respect to the various physical agents required by animals 
subject to metamorphosis, according to their several stages, the 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 537 

principle is alike ingrafted upon the ovum, and equally so in the 
case of man, by which his development is started by one kind 
of vital stimulus, and is farther conducted through foetal life by 
another kind, while a variety obtain after independent life be- 
gins. It is a metamorphosis in all. (Chapter VII.) 

This brings us to the particular application of our subject, the 
simple subserviency of Instinct to the exigencies of organic life. 
Here it is, in the well-marked metamorphic animals, that it is 
distinctly seen that all its modifications keep pace, pari passu, 
with the changes of organization, aud that the law is exactly co- 
incident with that which respects the changes of structure, and 
is designed alone to fulfill the necessities of the latter. They 
equally spring from a common principle of mutation implanted 
in the germ. 

There remains to be considered the comparative independence 
of the Soul in the exercise of its highest functions ; when, also, 
certain anatomical facts between man and animals will be re- 
viewed for the purpose of contrasting them in yet other relations 
to the Soul and Instinct. 

Although there be a co-operation of the brain with the Soul 
in all acts of intellection, .it does not follow from what has been 
said that the Rational may not act in greater independence of the 
organ than the Instinctive faculty. Just otherwise, indeed ; for 
my argument to this effect is founded, in part, upon the distinc- 
tions which I have indicated between the Soul and Instinct, and 
upon what I am about to say of the general coincidence between 
the brain of man and of the highest orders of animals, though an 
opposite conclusion has been deduced from this relation. But 
the inference as to the equal dependence of the operations of the 
Soul and Instinct upon a concurrent action of the brain or its 
equivalent has also depended upon a neglect of the distinction in 
their attributes, or an assumption that there is no difference. 
The analogy in such a case would be sound and conclusive, so 
far as it respects man and the approximate animals. But our 
premises are indisputable, that all the higher acts of intellection, 
every thing which falls within the province of Reason, have no 
existence in animals. It is the only thing, indeed, which essen- 
tially distinguishes man from the brute, and would be in itself 
conclusive against the prevailing doctrine that man was once a 



538 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

member of the quadrumanous race. We have also seen that In- 
stinct is more comprehensive in certain respects in many insects 
where a ganglion takes the place of a brain, and far more allied 
in its operations to the plans of Reason, than in the highest order 
of animals, and is often as mature in the new-born as in the 
adult being ; and since, also, the organization of the brain of the 
higher animals is greatly like that of man, but without an}?- of 
his intellectual functions, we must logically conclude that what 
is so absolutely peculiar to the Soul, and, as generally granted, 
allied to (rod himself, acts in greater independence of the brain 
than does simple Instinct. But so inscrutable are its connec- 
tions, as well as those of Instinct, with the organ in which it re- 
sides, that I shall not trespass beyond the limits which are pre- 
scribed by observation. Our facts terminate abruptly at this 
point, and mystery begins. But we may pursue the facts, and 
reason upon them as upon the most tangible evidence. We will 
therefore interrogate other proof in support of our conclusions. 

We have seen that every variety of cerebral structure, from 
its approximation to man's in the higher animals, to its disap- 
pearance in a scarcely appreciable ganglion in the lower tribes, 
is attended throughout with undeviating and perfect manifesta- 
tions of Instinct, though according to the nature of the animal, 
while they are only dimly seen in the human species. This, in 
respect to Instinct, is conformable with all analogy as it regards 
other organs where the results depend upon anatomical structure 
acting through the principle of Organic Life. There is every 
varietjr, for example, in the organization of the liver, from its 
greatest elaboration in man and the higher animals until we 
meet with it in the lower orders as a bundle of tubes or a simple 
sac. Yet in all it generates a product which is nearly the same, 
and which performs the same office throughout. And so of the 
kidneys, salivary glands, stomach, &c. 

So far the analogy is complete between Instinct and its organ, 
and the Principle of Life and all parts of the body which that 
principle animates. But Instinct, as we have seen, must not, 
therefore, be confounded with organic products. The analogy, 
indeed, goes with our other facts in showing that it is the cause 
of certain results through the instrumentality of the brain, or its 
equivalent, and the nervous system, as the Principle of Life is 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 539 

the cause of other results in and through that same system of or- 
gans and every other variety of structure. 

Coming to the brain of man, the foregoing analogy totally 
fails as it respects the manifestations of Eeason and Instinct. 
There is an endless variety of the former, but scarcely a real ex- 
hibition of the latter. We see all in the structure of the fully 
developed animal brain that can be detected in the human, or 
with only the modifications that are incident to approximate 
species, but a perfect blank as it respects the rational faculties. 
The analogy, however, is complete in man's, so far as the brain 
subserves all that Instinct can discharge among the animal tribes, 
and all that is relative to the latter in the contributions which 
the nervous system makes to organic life. The only difference 
here is the substitution of the Intellectual for the Instinctive 
functions ; and whatever relates to the manifestations of Instinct, 
and all the influence of the passions upon the organs of organic 
life, are demonstrative of the co-operation of the brain with the 
Soul. But the moment we leave this ground and approach the 
abstract operations of the higher faculties of the Soul, there is 
not the slightest indication that the brain has any functional con- 
nection with the processes, however much its integrity may be 
necessary ; and the only foundation for the conclusion that such 
connection exists is the analogy which is supplied by Eeason in 
its exercise of the voluntary and other Instinctive functions of 
animals. 

Again : we have seen that in the infancy of man the Mind is 
inoperative, while the Instinctive Principle of animals is nearly 
as active and comprehensive in their earliest as in their latest 
stage of existence. We have also seen that Instinct is suscepti- 
ble of artificial impressions, resembling education, in the infancy 
of animals, and mostly then. This distinction can proceed only 
from a radical difference between the Soul and Instinct ; and the 
attendant final causes of that difference consist in the special de- 
sign of the Soul for rational functions when the body is suffi- 
ciently mature for any practical purposes, and of Instinct for the 
simple uses of the body. The necessity of Instinct, it may be 
farther said, is superseded in man not only by the endowments 
of Reason when it comes into individual operation, but by its 
delegated offices before its development takes place, while no 



540 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

such protective care, as a general fact, can be extended by the 
Instinctive Principle to the new-born animal. Hence, therefore, 
as there are no superfluities in Nature, Instinct is in full opera- 
tion at the birth of animals, when there is no display of it in the 
human race, nor is the Soul only slowly developed in its ra- 
tional faculties. And thus do the physiological facts, the mani- 
festations of Eeason and of Instinct, and the final causes concur 
together. 

And now comes up the remarkable anatomical fact, which goes 
also to the same conclusions (although supposed to be in opposition 
to them), that Instinctive acts are irrespective of the progressive 
stages of cerebral development, while those of the human mind 
await that development. This corresponds, in respect to animals, 
exactly with what we know of the general maturity of the func- 
tions of all other parts at all stages of life, and with what we have 
seen of the objects of Instinct and Eeason, since the former must 
be in early operation for the exigencies of organic life, while the 
Soul, in the complexity of its functions, and according to its ob- 
jects, is only ready to act when the brain shall have acquired 
sufficient maturity for those endless physical impressions which 
come through the medium of the senses, and from which the Soul 
gathers its earliest treasures of knowledge. 

Such, then, is the relative aspect in which must be regarded 
the correspondence between the progressive development and ma- 
turity of the brain and the operations of Mind in early life ; the 
development or maturity of the brain having as well a reference 
to the multifarious physical contributions from the senses, as to 
their appropriation by the Soul ; while, also, the admirable De- 
sign obtains of rendering the brain complete in all its relations to 
the organs of organic life from the moment of birth, and, on the 
other hand, its endowment for the uses of the Soul exactly pro- 
gressive with those physical developments of other parts that are 
indispensable to the objects of Reason at the different stages of 
advancing life. The design is inexpressibly sublime in its nu- 
merous yet distinct involutions, as they relate to organic and an- 
imal life and the uses of Reason. The Soul, therefore, may be, 
abstractly considered, in as perfect a state in infancy as at any 
stage of life. 

Thus it appears that, besides the physical development of the 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 541 

brain which is requisite for the impression of natural objects, that 
maturity of the organ is, also, as a part of the design, a necessary 
medium through which the Soul may appropriate the impressions. 
Having made these advances, the Soul comes to act in more or 
less independence of sensation, and to multiply knowledge by its 
own efforts. Nevertheless, it is peculiarly useful to my purposes 
that instances are seen of occasional displays of Eeason in early 
childhood which are surpassed at adult age only by genius of the 
highest order. In some of these rare cases there had been only 
the most slender antecedent relative knowledge acquired through 
the medium of the senses, but the Soul itself originated its own 
vast conceptions, carried them into a variety of practical applica- 
tions without the instrumentality of foreign aid, and to an extent 
where erudition, with all the appliances of sense and the facilities 
of instruction, falls far short of equal achievements — as witnessed 
in the institution of mathematical principles and processes. And 
here we strengthen our position by the converse rule, since in 
none of the cases has there been a ratio in the advances of Mind 
corresponding with the advancing maturity of the brain, while in 
some the early intellectual ability has settled down at adult age 
to a common mediocrity. In the latter case it can not be doubted 
that the progress of the brain has embarrassed the rational fac- 
ulties. Again, there is every gradation in Eeason, from the Hot- 
tentot to the highest order of genius. There are no two individ- 
uals alike either in its compass or in the manner of its exercise. 
How different is all this with Instinct, which directs every indi- 
vidual of every species of animal in one uniform way, and no one 
of them enjoys, throughout all generations, any different or great- 
er endowment than all the rest. 

And thus do the contrasts between the Soul and Instinctive 
Principle correspond with the anatomical contrasts, both as they 
relate to the brain of man and of animals, and to the human 
brain and other organs in the state of infancy, and with the coin- 
cidences in function, instinctive and organic, between the brain 
of animals or its equivalent and other organs at all stages of life. 
And here, too, should be brought into review what has been said 
of the injuries which are inflicted upon the Mind and its associate 
organ, and through those influences upon the whole organism, 
by overtasking the Mind in early life, while no such injuries are 



542 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sustained, but the contrary realized, by a severe exercise of In- 
stinct in the infancy of animals. 

It may be now well to inquire into what is meant by ideas, and 
whether there be generally any definite conception of their nature, 
and, by ascertaining the facts, endeavor to show by this method 
that the earliest acquirements through the instrumentality of the 
senses demonstrate the self-acting and originating endowment of 
Mind, and that it is distinguished, at its very dawning, from the 
Instinctive Principle, by the characteristic of forming ideas of the 
nature of objects. This inquiry, like the rest, belongs alone to 
the Physiologist. How, then, does sensation give rise to what 
are recognized as ideas by Reason ? The impressions transmitted 
to the brain through the organs of sense, or such as may arise 
from internal causes, do not, certainly, constitute the ideas, as is 
apt to be supposed ; and, according to my demonstration, the im- 
pressions made upon the brain can not, through any physical or 
chemical influences upon the organ, elicit the ideas from the or- 
gan itself. The impressions must, therefore, of necessity, call 
into action a Principle or Agent by which the ideas are alone 
formed ; from which it appears that the process by which the 
Mind seizes and appropriates impressions transmitted through 
the organs of sense, is similar to that by which it multiplies and 
originates ideas. It is true, animals have the capacity of forming 
ideas so far as they depend upon the promptings of sensation, 
and upon impulsive associations with the past that may be 
awakened by renewed sensations of a more simple nature. But 
they stop there. They are merely ideas of sensation; while, on 
the other hand, the results of sensation in man terminate in intel- 
lectual images which have no analogies in the brute creation, and 
these are the essential final cause of the human Soul. It is the 
Soul, therefore, which mainly does the work in acts of intellec- 
tion, while, in respect to the simple ideas of sensation, external 
objects, or internal causes, like that of hunger, supply the mate- 
rials. This is enough for my purposes ; and it will be as vain to 
inquire into the modus operandi of the Mind in its abstract opera- 
tions, or in its perception of external objects, or how impressions 
are made upon the nerves of sense, or what their nature, or how 
they are transmitted by the nerves to the brain, or how they call 
the Mind or Instinct into action, as to interrogate the modus ope- 
randi of Creative Energy. 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 513 

Such are the conclusions to which the evidence of anatomical 
and physiological facts have successively led ; nor have I any 
doubt that others will see in the demonstrations that man is an 
animal only in his physical being ; that in Mind he is far less al- 
lied to the things of the earth than he is to their Author; and 
will realize a corroboration of their own conceptions, that the 
Soul and Instinctive Principle are so far differently constituted 
as implied by the ultimate existence of one in an abstract condi- 
tion, while the other shares the destiny of organic life. They 
will see, I say, a new ground of belief in the immortality of the 
Soul, and in the perishable nature of Instinct. And if this be so, 
they will see in my premises and conclusions a contradistinction 
between God and Nature, and what is equivalent to a demonstra- 
tion of the existence of a Creative Spirit, in which alone the 
Thinking part of man can have had its origin. And, coming to 
other details in relation to man, they will realize in the Mosaic 
declaration that " the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living Soul" an Inspiration from Him who "created 
man in his own image," and repose with equal confidence in the 
assurance that, although "the dust shall return to the earth as it 
was, the Spirit shall return unto the God who gave iV They will 
abide in the emphatic distinctions between the dust, the breath, 
and the Soul, and regard the Spirit as a special gift, a new Crea- 
tion, and the body as referring to materials already in being, and 
which were designed in their organic state, and kindled into life, 
to connect the Spiritual part with the material world ; and they 
will also see in the limitation of the statement as to the Soul of 
man what is the ultimate destiny of Instinct. 

Hence it follows, if Eevelation be received as to the immortality 
of the Soul and the death of Instinct, it must be received, also, as 
revealing a fundamental distinction between them, and should 
operate as a perfect barrier with all those who uphold the Scrip- 
tures against the common prejudice of identifying Instinct and 
Eeason, as confounding the revealed distinction, and therefore 
promoting infidelity in its aim at materialism and annihilation. 

Again : such is the nature of our premises, that, if the Soul of 
man be immaterial, so is the Instinct of animals. There are, more- 
over, no violent transitions in nature. The material existences; 



i 



544 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

especially the organic, pass gradually, as it were, into each other. 
And so, it can not be doubted, it is with the immaterial, from 
brute to man, from man to angels, from angels to God. 

"Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed 
That Wisdom Infinite must form the best, 
Where all must fall or not coherent be, 
And all that rises, rise in due degree ; 
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain, 
There must be somewhere such a rank as man ; 
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) 
Is only this : if God has placed him wrong ?" 

But we have also seen from our premises that, as soon as In- 
stinct shall have fulfilled its objects, it perishes with the life of 
the animal ; since, especially, all its present uses are limited to 
the wants of the body. Nor will its extinction affect the analo- 
gy of which we predicate its immateriality, nor contradict in the 
least the immortality of the Soul. We deduce the latter, apart 
from Eevelation, not from the Soul's immateriality, but from some 
of the facts which contradistinguish it from Instinct, that all its 
higher faculties have no relation to the uses of the body, and from 
the analogy which subsists between them and the Attributes of 
the Creator. We infer, also, the immateriality of the Soul, in part, 
from the same analogy ; though it is essential to this analogy that 
it be conceded that the Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipo- 
tent Being is as different from the inert matter of which. He is 
the Author as their manifestations are different from each other. 
And again, if these premises be admitted, it follows that immate- 
riality, or something totally distinct from matter, is indispensable 
to the unlimited duration of the Almighty, and therefore that it 
must be rendered equally so to the Soul. But the acknowledg- 
ment of a Creator carries with it a full admission of His immate- 
riality, otherwise matter would be self-existent, and God and the 
Universe would be on common ground. The latter is replete 
with Design, and that is the most that could be affirmed of the 
former. Neither should depend for its existence upon the other; 
nor, as we have seen, can matter create matter. I say, therefore, 
again, that Materialism is pantheism — atheism. 

It need not be repeated that the immateriality of Instinct is in- 
ferred from its feeble analogies to the Soul, though not in the 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE. 545 

least to any manifestations of those attributes which, ally the 
Soul to its Maker. 

It will have been seen that materialism, in its proper accepta- 
tion, and the question as to the materiality of the Soul, are dis- 
tinct from each other, since the former denies the existence of 
the Soul as a substantive agent, while the latter admits it. My 
object has been to substantiate the existence, more than the imma- 
teriality of the Soul. But the proof of the latter has constantly 
attended all that I have shown of the self-acting nature both of 
the Soul and Instinctive Principle, which contradistinguishes 
them from every known attribute of matter. The nearest ap- 
proximation, in the light of analogy, to what may be material, is 
to be seen in the Principle of Organic Life ; and here the resem- 
blance consists in action alone.* But the Principle of Life re- 
quires the operation of numerous physical causes to bring and 
maintain it in sensible action. It is impossible, therefore, to ad- 
duce a single phenomenon of the Soul or of Instinct that bears a 
resemblance to the manifestations of matter. 

Our inquiry may be variously pursued, especially upon the 
great basis of analogy. It is one of no little moment at the 
present day, and materialism must abide its own facts and meth- 
od of reasoning; a ground, however, which nothing can shake 
when presented according to its ordination in nature. In the 
present case, the admitted facts are co-extensive with all animal 
existences, and they are bound together in the different races by 
close resemblances. Indeed, in each of the series the facts differ 
only by shades. The evidence here is of the strongest possible 
nature, not only on account of the universality of the facts, but 
because they are founded in the unchanging character of organic 
beings. 

Besting, therefore, in the conclusions which I have now ex- 
pressed, and anxious for their greater prevalence against a pro- 
gressive and already widespread materialism, I have been led 
into this discussion in the hope that it may remove some of the 

* The eminent Professor Muller, who, in his work on Physiology, mingles Chem- 
istry very largely with his doctrines of Life, goes so far as to say that "There is noth- 
ing in the facts of natural science against the possibility of the Vital Principle be- 
ing immaterial, and of its independence of matter, though its powers be manifested in 
organic bodies or in matter." 

35 



546 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

obscurities of the subject, and also advance the great truths in 
Physiology and Medicine. The province of the Physiologist 
extends beyond the mere physical relations of matter and Mind. 
Of those relations he is the only expounder. But it devolves 
upon him, also, to seek in the depths of Physiology for the 
constitution of Mind as distinguished from matter; and thus, 
also, contribute towards a right faith in a future state of being. 
Wherever, indeed, he turns his inquiries into organic nature, he 
sees in the mechanism of every part — individually and collect- 
ively as a harmonious whole — in every function and product, 
separately and relatively — in the properties by which they are 
carried on, and in the laws by which they are governed, the most 
perfect evidences of consummate Design. It is the duty of the 
Physiologist to turn all this immense weight of proof against 
those crude doctrines of materialism, mental and medical, which 
have had their origin either in the closet of the speculatist or in 
the laboratory of the Organic Chemist. And thus, also, shall he 
secure from Mankind that homage for Medicine which is due to 
" the Divine Art," and again restore the Hippocratic axiom that 
• a philosophical physician is like a god." 

As it respects the Soul and Instinctive Principle, we have now 
seen that they are substantive existences, and all organic beings 
are made up of the common elements of matter. But there is 
no element known in the inorganic kingdom which affords any 
of the manifestations which characterize the Soul and Instinct, 
or any of the results of the organic mechanism. The latter, 
therefore, was endowed with new properties when the elements 
were brought into organic union. To say that vital properties 
were "slumbering in the elements" is a frivolous assumption, 
and necessarily involves the conclusion (which has been proba- 
bly intended) that the Soul, also, is equally inherent in the ele- 
ments, which is the worst kind of materialism. But the mani- 
festations of the Soul and Instinct are, as we have seen, not only 
totally different from those of every organic process, but can not 
be generated by the material part. These principles, therefore, 
were as much created as the elements of matter, and, as they ex- 
ist in union with the organized structure of man and animals, it 
is inferable that the structure was created simultaneously, and by 
a common act, with the spiritual part. Or, if the material ele- 



DEMONSTRATION OF THE INSTINCTIVE PEINCIPLE. 547 

ments were first combined, it would equally follow that it was a 
direct Creative Act, since the Soul and Instinctive Principle 
must have been created for the distinct purpose of being as- 
sociated with the material body. The rule, of course, applies, 
through the analogies of structure, to the vegetable kingdom, 
which it is equally consistent to suppose was created in the form 
of plants as of seeds, or as that man and mammiferous animals 
were created in a state of maturity, according to my demonstra- 
tion in Chapter YII. 



APPENDIX I. 

THE CEEATION AND ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 

' ' The growth of new systems out of old ones, without the intervention of Divine 
Power, seems to me apparently absurd." " It became Him who created all material 
things to set them in order ; and if He did so, it is unphilosophical to ask for any 
other origin of this world, or to pretend that it might rise out of chaos by the mere 
laws of nature ; though, being once formed, it may continue by those laws." — 
Neavton, Optics, Book III. 

In my work on Theoretical Geology (1856) I have given a 
critical attention to the Creation of the Earth, as deduced from 
geological facts and the established principles of the physical 
sciences ; and it is now my purpose to present that demonstra- 
tion in this Appendix, and thus render it instrumental in estab- 
lishing the Divine origin and proper interpretation of the Mosaic 
Narrative. We here enter, therefore, upon substantial geological 
ground, and I shall carry along those fundamental laws which 
are profoundly involved in the creative acts that are exclusively 
relative to the earth ; but of a different character from that phi- 
losophy by which I have endeavored to demonstrate the literal 
meaning of the Narrative of Creation, and that the Narrative was 
as precisely dictated as were the Ten Commandments. (Chapter 
XIY.) And although I do not here intend to employ the Word 
of God in proof of itself, yet as our discussion continues to be 
predicated of His statements, we must necessarily have them be- 
fore us. I shall proceed, therefore, in the first place, to state a 
few of the Creator's declarations upon the subject of Creation, 
which will sufficiently cover the whole ground of the first Chap- 
ter of Genesis. 

"And the earth was without form and void; awe? darkness was 
upon the face of the deep ; and the Spirit of God MOVED upon the 
face of the WATERS. 

"And God said, Let there he LIGHT; and there teas light." 

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst OF 



550 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

THE WATERS; and LET it DIVIDE THE WATERS FROM THE WA- 
TERS ;" that is, spn, firmament, to stamp dovm, and ^ina, to sepa- 
rate or divide. "And God made the firmament, and divided the 
waters, and IT WAS so." 

11 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered 
together unto one place, and LET the dry land appear. And IT WAS 
SO. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering to- 
gether of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it ivas 
good. 11 

11 And God said, Let Us make man in Our Image, after Our 
Likeness.' 11 u And God created man in His oiun Image. 11 " The 
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soid 11 

I have introduced the foregoing series of creative acts for the 
purpose, also, of showing, by the coincidence of language in 
which they are expressed, that a common rule of interpretation 
must apply to the whole ; and that same rule must apply equally 
to every other part of the Eecord, as demonstrated in Chapter 
XI Y. By no possible prevarication can this fundamental law of 
language be violated or modified ; and least of all where every 
consecutive act is equally a part of a systematic whole. This 
principle is as true of the plans of man as of the Creator. If the 
declarations, therefore, in respect to the creation of light and of 
man denote, as the exigencies enforce, the direct exercise of Cre- 
ative Energy, then, by the analogies of the acts, as well as by the 
sameness of language, the organization of the earth was depend- 
ent upon that Energy. 

Our premises declare that, when the earth was brought into 
being, it was in a chaotic state. But whether this be admitted 
or not (as it universally is), I shall endeavor to demonstrate that 
by no possible operation of the properties and laws of matter 
could the earth have been brought into its present condition 
without the direct interposition of "the Spirit of God" — so for- 
cibly and Divinely expressed by the words, u The Spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the waters." Nevertheless, it will be 
seen that the necessities for Creative Power in the organization 
of the earth, and in the production of atmospheric air, were less 
than in bringing the component materials into existence, or in 
the creation of living beings out of the materials ; and my dem- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 551 

onstration of this will be founded throughout, as it has been in 
respect to organic beings, upon those "natural laws" which The- 
oretical Greology so much adores. (Chapters YII. and VIII.) 
The foregoing distinction grows out of the absolute differences 
between the properties and laws, and organized conditions, of in- 
animate and animated beings ; though in the application of the 
term organization to the earth it is used in a generic sense, and 
simply relates to that crystalline structure of the primary rocks 
which distinguishes them so broadly from their amorphous con- 
ditions, or as transformed by heat into trap and basalt, without 
confounding their composition or structure with those of organic 
beings. That composition, and the relative positions of the crys- 
tals, imply as distinctly the direct interposition of Creative Pow- 
er as do the relative positions and composition of the several 
parts which make up the living being. There can be no sounder 
maxim in philosophy than that which obliges us to refer to a 
Higher Power what the laws of nature are clearly and absolutely 
incapable of explaining; and especially where all the important 
facts are directly opposed to the laws of Nature. Moreover, in 
those crystalline rocks which compose the great bulk of the 
earth, we shall find the evidences of Wisdom and Unity of De- 
sign of which human reason would be a humble imitator. Our 
reason, I say, prompts the conclusion that, after the direct act of 
creating the earth in a chaotic state, it would either leave the ma- 
terials to organize themselves into granite and other crystalline 
rocks, and into organic beings, according to the philosophy of 
Theoretical Greology, or, should this be totally impossible accord- 
ing to the admitted laws of Nature (Chapter VII.), Reason would 
avail itself of those laws and the properties impressed upon mat- 
ter, and exert its creative power in co-operation with them, and 
effect such a result as would be most in conformity with their 
natural operation, so far as the projected plan would admit. 
Such, exactly, is the case before us, Creative Power having done 
nothing more than what would have been done by human rea- 
son. And all this is not only taught by Revelation, but it is im- 
portant to the dignity of " the Science." The organization of 
the earth was far less exclusively an act of Creative Energy than 
any of Christ's miracles ; for in the former case, as we shall see, 
the properties and laws of matter were called into definite action, 



552 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

while the miracles had no such relationship, but were purely cre- 
ative acts ; and if either is to be determined by its probabilities, 
or by any weight of testimony, who will not sooner yield to the 
irresistible proof which is forever before his senses and under- 
standing ? 

Yery different, however, from the organization of the earth is 
the case of living beings. Here the properties of life having no 
existence in the elements of matter, there could have been no co- 
operation with them as in the organization of the earth, but, of 
necessity, there was as much a creation of these properties as 
there had been of the materials, and therefore equally so of the 
Soul and Instinctive Principle. (Chapter VII.) Nor was it left 
to Theoretical Geology to predicate its analogical speculations, in 
these important matters, of the constitution of the globe, but it 
was forewarned that — "The Lord God formed man of the dust 
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life, 
and man became a Living Soul." 

The Sacred Writings abound with examples both of the co- 
operation of Creative Power with second causes, or with instru- 
mentalities which are equivalent to such causes, and of many mi- 
raculous events which are purely of a creative nature, in which 
natural processes are apparently imitated. But here the argu- 
ment addresses itself to those who admit the general truth of 
Eevelation. Of one or the other of the foregoing natures was the 
whole of God's administration during the Theocracy : the con- 
ceptions of our Lord and of John the Baptist, in the former of 
whom were united the prerogatives of Creative Power with the 
peculiarities of a dependent second cause ; the Magi conducted 
by the miraculous star ; the frogs coming out of the water upon 
the land of Egypt, where they must have been created, as well as 
the miraculous hail, then and afterwards; the plague of locusts; 
the turning of dust into lice; the quails and manna; the prep- 
aration of Jonah's fish and gourd ; the fall of the wall of Jeri- 
cho; the subjugation of the Heathen nations; the circumstances 
attending the Deluge and Ark; the conversion of water into 
wine, and the loaves and fishes of our Lord, &c, &c. The lan- 
guage, also, in such of the foregoing instances as were wholly 
miraculous or entirely of a creative nature, generally corresponds 
with the apparent imitation of natural processes. This is the pre- 



APPENDIX I.— OKGANIZATION OP THE EAKTH. 553 

vailing manner of presenting such acts throughout the Bible, and 
begins at the very outset of Creation ; as in the expressions — 
"Let the waters bring forth abundantly," &c. — "Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature," &c. This is so characteristic of 
Eevelation, and so admirably harmonious with the relations of 
things, that it forms an internal proof of its Divine origin ; and 
this inference is farther confirmed by the fact that the precaution 
is generally taken as representing the events as the results of Cre- 
ative Energy — as that, " God created great whales, and every liv- 
ing creature," &c. — "And God made the beast of the earth," &c. 
— "And God made every plant of the field before it was in the 
earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for" &c. 

The profession of " science," and of the " laws of nature," ren- 
dered it an easy achievement to ingulf all classes of society in 
either the Neptunian or Plutonic theory of the formation of the 
earth. Even the unflinching advocate of the natural interpret- 
ation of the Mosaic Narrative has often failed to perceive that 
the admission of either doctrine is in palpable contradiction of 
himself, since either necessarily involves "the long indefinite 
period " of Theoretical Geologj^, and its application to an inter- 
pretation of the stratified rocks, and the " medals" which the fos- 
siliferous embrace. The man of faith, rather than be regarded 
as deficient in " science," has been thus taken in an inextricable 
snare, since if either the Plutonic or Neptunian theory be true, 
all that is said of the agency of the Creator in the organization 
of the earth would be the merest fiction. But more than all, the 
man of faith has been allured into a belief in the chance-doc- 
trine, that the Creator so endowed the elements of matter and the 
laws of inorganic nature with creative forces that they could car- 
ry out, of themselves, all the wonderful plans of Omniscience, and 
that this view of the subject, so utterly contradicted by all that is 
known of second causes, actually redounds more to the glory of 
the Creator than the supposition that he was directly instrument- 
al in the completion of his own works. (See Chapters VII. and 
VIII.) Nevertheless, in respect to the foregoing hypotheses, 
there are unequivocal indications in the primary rocks of their 
having been in a state of solution in water; and, as will be 
shown, they also abound with proof that they have never been 
evolved from a fused or nebular condition. 



554 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

According to the Word of God, the earth, immediately follow- 
ing its creation, was in a blended condition of water and other 
mineral substances; and, from the remarkable expression — " The 
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters " — we are en- 
abled to infer, so far as this authority may be admitted, that the 
solid material was intimately incorporated with the water. This 
derives farther confirmation, also, from the statement that " God 
said. Let the ivaters under the heavens he gathered together unto one 
place, and let the dry land appear: and it was -so." But we have 
conclusive testimony of all this yet in prospect ; and I will now 
say that, since the inspired penman could not have deduced his 
conclusion of a chaotic state of the earth, and its subsequent or- 
ganization, from any geological knowledge, and therefore, if di- 
rected by his own reason, he would have represented the earth 
as created in a perfect state, like man, animals, and plants ; and 
since, also, it may be shown to be in the highest degree probable 
that the earth was brought into being in the very condition set 
forth in the Narrative, an important internal proof is thus sup- 
plied of the Divine authenticity of the statement. Such, how- 
ever, I saj^, would not have been the statement of an uninspired 
writer, who, at the same time, pronounced the demonstrable re- 
alities of the creation of man and animals in a state of maturity, 
and carried out the principle of Unity of Design in respect to 
the organic kingdom, and of the exigencies of animals in regard 
to food according to the duration of the Creative Days, by af- 
firming the creation of " every plant of the field before it ivas in 
the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew" (See Chap- 
ters VII. and XIY.) 

It may be also insisted at the outset, that the universally ac- 
cepted Plutonic, or the so-called Nebular Theory, is as absolutely 
opposed, not only to the whole Mosaic account of Creation, but 
to all the facts supplied by the earth, as fire and water are op- 
posed to each other. However it may be assumed that there 
was "a long indefinite period between the beginning and the 
first of the Six Days," it will not help the hypothesis. But the 
details of the Narrative commence with the first day, and it was 
on that clay and the two following days that the chaotic condition 
and organization of the earth are described. Earth and water 
are represented as having been at the beginning in an universal- 



APPENDIX I.— OKGANIZATION OF THE EAKTH. 555 

ly commingled state ; and this is to become a subject of proof by 
those living witnesses, the primary rocks. The subsequent parts 
of the Narrative determine the fact, also, that the writer was de- 
scribing the condition of the earth in its nascent state, and its 
first evolution from chaos. It is an integral and consistent part 
of a common whole ; and if there be any truth, therefore, in the 
statements relative to the creation of plants, animals, and man, 
then must the account of the primary condition and organiza- 
tion of the earth be regarded as descriptive of the first acts of 
Creative Power. There is no other method of evading this con- 
clusion than that of Laplace in his ambitious reply to Napoleon. 

From the various premises, therefore, which have now been 
stated, we may proceed, before coming to the proof, to infer the 
probability that the solid portions of the earth were created in a 
state of concentrated solution, the most insoluble as well as the 
most soluble — all in a state of inextricable intermixture except- 
ing by that Power who brought them into this condition, but 
far less confounded, and far more perfected, than their elements 
would have been according to the nebular hypothesis. It is con- 
sidered, as we shall see, by some of the most enlightened Chem- 
ists, that the solid contents of the earth embrace the necessary 
solvents ; and if it be thought that the present quantity of water 
was insufficient, we may consistently suppose that an ample pro- 
vision was made, for it will be shown to have been essentially a 
matter of Creative Power, though much of the process involved 
the simultaneous operation of second causes. Admitting, how- 
ever, for the present, that this is only conjectural, we are entitled 
to say that it is far more probable than what we shall see of the 
remarkable violations of the laws of nature, and even of possibil- 
ities, which surround the hypotheses of igneous fusion, or a neb- 
ular condition. How the metallic substances and some other 
things were brought into a state of solution, it is not for me to 
explain, except as it may be readily deduced from the display of 
Creative Energy in the organization of the primary rocks. 

Among the facts which render a concentrated solution of the 
solid materials of the earth in the highest degree plausible are 
the vast depositions of silex from an aqueous solution in various 
parts of the globe ; and a very exact analogy occurs in what is 
sometimes seen on breaking open siliceous geodes, when the wa- 



556 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ter within them immediately deposits crystals of the same min- 
eral. Chemistry, in expounding the common phenomenon of in- 
crustations of geodes, remarks that, "Some unknown condition 
must be supposed in order to explain the existence of siliceous 
crystals in closed cavities, which never could have contained ivater 
enough for the solution of the materials, unless they were originally in 
a much more soluble state." Immense crystals of this mineral, and 
sometimes embracing masses of gold, have been also the admitted 
result of an aqueous solution under very analogous circumstances, 
and precisely such, too, as form a principal component part of 
granitic rocks. And yet, vain would be the attempt of man to 
effect the slightest solution of silex or quartz, in their ordinary 
state, by water alone ; and least of all the other component parts 
of granite, mica and feldspar. If, also, either of these crystals be 
subjected to the action of tire, it is completely destructive of their 
crystalline condition, and Chemistry would as soon undertake the 
conversion of iron into gold as the formation of any granitic 
crystal by the agency of caloric. But Chemistry, through one 
of its enlightened Professors, and an advocate of the long geolog- 
ical periods, and of the igneous origin of the earth, supplies all 
that can be desired in support of our interpretation of the prima- 
ry condition of the earth. It gives us an ample amount of solv- 
ents, while no small proportion of the water was incorporated in 
the crystalline rocks when "the dry land appeared." Thus our 
Author — 

" We are compelled to admit that in the early periods of the 
earth the ocean must have prevailed far more extensively than 
now, if not universally ; or, in other words, the existing dry land 
must have been tinder water. 11 "Now, what properties may we fair- 
ly suppose would have belonged to the ivaters that hovered over 
the embryo islands and continents still immersed in their native 
element [after Pluto had done his part], before the elevation 
commenced by which the dry land was made to appear, and 
what qualities may we not suppose the present ocean to possess 
at profound depths, where its pressure is great, and in those 
places where the heat maj also be active and long prevailing. 
Water, under such circumstances, must evidently be a fluid of 
very peculiar properties. It must contain all the chemical agents 
not only that are soluble in it, but also that are soluble in a com- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 557 

pound fluid consisting of water and of other agents still more act- 
ive. The acids would be solvents for the alkalies, the metallic 
oxides, and most of the earths ; the alkalies would be solvents 
for alumina and silica ; acids and alkalies may have alternately 
prevailed ; and even if acids, alkalies, and earths, and the other 
metallic oxides, had been present at the same time, and had 
formed salts, these compounds, so far as they were soluble in 
water, would also impart to the fluid peculiar solvent powers; 
while those compounds which were precipitated would be thus 
removed, so as not to impede other agencies," &c. "It is worthy 
of remark that quartz, feldspar, and mica, the prevailing miner- 
als in granite, gneiss, and mica slate, are composed mainly of sili- 
ca and alumina. Now, silica and alumina are very soluble in the 
fixed alkalies ; alumina is soluble in acids, silica in hydrochloric 
acid, and this agent can render silica gaseous. There are notable 
quantities of potassa and soda in both feldspar and mica, and flu- 
oric acid has been found in the latter. It appears, therefore, that 
those solvents were present at the birth of these minerals, and entered 
into their constitution. Alkali exists in the earth in vast abun- 
dance, and thus even silica and alumina may have been provided 
with an appropriate solvent. The solubility of all the existing mate- 
rials that form the crust of the globe ; their solubility in all their 
elementary forms, or in their prismatic or complex combinations, 
is a matter clearly demonstrable, and actually demonstrated" More- 
over, our able authority contributes the following statement to 
our creative or Mosaic theoiy, and which is intended to represent 
the condition of the earth in its supposed transition-state from 
Pluto to Neptune. " The deepest rock," he says, " of which we 
have any knowledge is not of a mechanical deposit. It is made 
up principally of crystals, or of parts more or less crystalline in 
structure, mutually adjusted by salient and rectangular angles. Ev- 
ery thing implies a previous state of corpuscular mobilitj^, the 
particles having liberty of motion ; and the only powers equal to 
the effect are heat and electricity, aided by water and the saline, 
alkaline, acid, and other soluble chemical agents." — Professor 
Silliman's Appendix to BakewelVs Geology. 

We are thus supplied with all the necessary data, founded on 
the strictest scientific principles, for our demonstration. I pro- 
ceed, therefore, to say that the crystalline structure alone of 



558 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

those rocks which, form the great bulk of the earth is not only 
demonstrative of their condensation from a solution in water, 
but that by no possibility could the different crystals have ob- 
tained their relations to each other without the direct agency of 
Creative Power. Granite is composed of three small crystals in 
juxtaposition, each one of which is of very different solubility, 
or fusibility, and therefore condensible at very different states 
of solution or of fusion ; and yet their relative positions declare 
their simultaneous formation. And what but the directing agen- 
cy of Creative Power could have arranged those three crystals 
side by side of each other throughout all the granite of the 
globe ? Were it possible for the crystals to have emerged from 
a state of solution or of fusion without such agency, the three 
kinds would have formed at very different times, and would 
have either mingled in indiscriminate confusion, or each would 
have consolidated into masses of quartz, feldspar, and mica, re- 
mote from each other. Here we meet, at the onset, with a con- 
dition of things which proves a simultaneous and sudden con- 
densation of the solid materials of the earth, and in exact corre- 
spondence with the Scripture account both as to the Divine 
agency and the time employed. But this, as we have seen, does 
not in the least imply that " the Spirit of God," when it " moved 
upon the face of the waters," did not co-operate with the properties 
already impressed upon matter, in bringing the globe into its fin- 
ished condition ; while, also, such would be the inference from 
the ways of the Creator, and from the structure of the crystals. 
It is, also, unimportant as to the questions of fusion or solution, 
excepting as Revelation and all the facts contradict the former 
supposition and proclaim the latter. Indeed, as will be shown, 
the Plutonic or nebular hypothesis is condemned by all that is 
known in science. 

I now come to another direct and absolutely imperative fact, 
and in exact correspondence with the Divine Narrative. This 
important fact consists in the vast amount of water which is in- 
corporated in all the crystalline structure of the rocks, and which 
not only proves their original solution in water, but, as we shall 
see, is alone subversive of the Plutonic, or igneous, or nebular 
hypothesis; for each of these terms expresses essentially the 
same thing. This insuperable fact in demonstrating the aqueous 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 559 

solution of the rocks might be extensively illustrated and en- 
forced; but no farther assistance is required for the enlighten- 
ment of those who may be disposed to abide by the logic of facts ; 
although this water of crystallization will be farther applied in 
proving the absurdity of the nebular hypothesis. 

Keserving for a subsequent stage of our inquiry a more elabo- 
rate examination of the positive evidences which the earth con- 
tains of the direct interposition of Creative Power in its organiza- 
tion, I shall first adduce others which are less demonstrative in 
an absolute sense, but which are not less conclusive in their rela- 
tions to such as are demonstrable. 

What, then, should have been the consequences of a sudden 
reduction of the globe from an aqueous condition into " dry land 
and seas," upon the principle that second causes were in full op- 
eration so far as was consistent with the exigencies of the event, 
and with that general superintendence of the Creator which all 
but the infidel allow ? Certainly, an universal generation of va- 
pors and gnses throughout the entire mass, and as certainly an 
eruption of mountain-ranges in all quarters of the globe, both in 
sea and on land ; and as the mountains were thrown up, the cor- 
responding formation of valleys simultaneously provided for the 
seas. Indeed, it is abundantly manifest that such must have been 
the origin of the seas ; and there is ample proof that the mount- 
ains were at first submerged, and that the great ranges were of 
contemporaneous appearance.* All was natural, save only that 
organizing influence which Pantheism recognizes only in the 
laws of nature. 

Such, therefore, is not only in exact correspondence with the 
present condition of the globe, and with what is implied by the 
Inspired Narrative, but there is no other theory which will in the 
least explain the phenomena ; while, also, there is ample proof 
that the subalpine, and even minor elevations, followed in quick 
succession, notwithstanding, as we shall see, the supposed contra- 
dictory phenomena of the fossil iferous rocks. A great develop- 
ment of latent heat would have been another consequence of the 
sudden condensation of the solid parts of the earth, resulting in 

* The division of "the waters which were under the firmament from the waters 
which were above the firmament, ''has been considered in Chapter XIV., along with 
the general internal proof of the literal meaning of the Narrative. 



560 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the early fusion of a large extent of those rocks which had been 
thus consolidated, and which will abundantly explain the numer- 
ous extinct volcanoes, and the dikes of trap which have been so 
embarrassing to Theoretical Geology, especially as they occur in 
the coal formations, or where they are apparently obtruded into 
the stratified rocks, but not rising above their surface ; in either 
of which cases, as will be shown in Appendix III., the coal, or 
the mineral strata, have been simply deposited around and upon 
these ancient igneous eruptions. 

The rarity of animal exuviae upon the summits of lofty mount- 
ains is one of the proofs of their early elevation ; and their abun- 
dance in the lower hills is no evidence of a long subsequent in- 
terval, since the prolific nature of the animals would render a 
century or two sufficiently ample for the exigencies of the earliest 
fossiliferous strata. Who, it may be also suggested, shall pre- 
sume to limit the "abundance" in which aquatic animals, as the 
Narrative informs us, were originally created ? But, as our proof 
must rest upon ascertained facts, it is only necessary to refer to 
the rapid multiplication of fishes, and of the testaceous tribes ; 
nor is it any longer doubtful that coral reefs are of speedy for- 
mation. But immediately after the consolidation of the primary 
rocks the waters were highly charged with calcareous and other 
substances more soluble than mica, silex, feldspar, &c, and hence 
the rapid deposition of the limestone rocks, while the abundance 
of the testacea involves the necessity of their predominance in 
those oceanic deposits.* All objections, indeed, are fast disap- 
pearing that can interfere with a supposed occurrence of a sud- 
den, early, and simultaneous upheaval of the great mountain- 
ranges and the subalpine cliffs ; and their universality proves 

* Bakewell, in his Geology, enters into a calculation upon this subject, taking the 
bodies of fossil fish in the chalk formations as a test of the rapidity with which the 
depositions took place — "Their entire and uncompressed bodies," he says, "prove 
that the chalk which surrounded them was extremely soft and yielding, as also with 
the argillaceous strata." (See Appendix III.) "Several days might elapse before 
the body was completely buried under calcareous earth. If, say seven days, and es- 
timate the thickness of the fish at three inches, we shall have a chronometer to meas- 
ure the time required to form a stratum of chalk three inches in depth, namely, one 
week. This is equal to one foot in a month, or twelve feet in a year ; and could we 
suppose the deposition to proceed without interruption, it would not require more 
than ninety years to form a mass of chalk-beds one thousand feet in thickness, which is 
more than all the chalk-beds in England." 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 561 

the sudden organization of the globe, for by no other process 
could the necessary vapors and gases have been so suddenly and 
universally generated as the facts in the case demand. Nor can 
there be any other interpretation of the quick subsidence of those 
violent causes, and of their continued absence, except as they 
were pent up for a longer time in certain localities, as not im- 
probably where the upheavals occurred which were instrumental 
in "breaking up the fountains of the great deep" at the time of 
the Noachian Flood. While, therefore, it would be necessary to 
concede that an absence of the mountain-ranges would be de- 
monstrative of the hypothesis of the slow formation of the earth, 
their presence is conclusive against it. As to the eruption of 
mountains and hills through sedimentary strata, such may have 
occurred soon after the organization of the earth, since, as will 
have been shown, its stratification was immediately consequent; 
or, it is highly probable that more or less of the elevated regions 
that have been obtruded through the sedimentary rocks were 
thrown up on the event of the General Deluge. And thus, as 
we shall ever find it throughout our vast field of inquiry, the 
Creator has impressed upon His works the most conclusive evi- 
dences of the literal meaning of His Word. To the foregoing 
agencies should be added those which have occasioned the later 
and limited upheavals, and which have been due to volcanic 
action consequent on local decompositions and other chemical 
actions beneath the upraised localities, and which are still in 
progress. 

Although, therefore, it be always our purpose to move on in 
concert with philosophy and Eevelation, if we were to take the 
latter alone for our guide in the case before -us, we should equally 
attain the certainty of a sudden organization of the earth on the 
third day of Creation as the direct result of the " Spirit of God 
moving upon the face of the waters" and, as specifically stated in 
the command — u Let the waters under the heaven he gathered together 
unto one place, and let the dry land appear ;" since it would be nec- 
essarily inferred that such an organization or sudden condensa- 
tion of the earth as is thus declared would have been attended 
by a generation of vapors and gases which would have speedily 
resulted in a general upheaval of mountain-ranges. 

We have already seen, by a variety of demonstrations, that 

36 



562 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the relationship of the earth, water, atmospheric air, light, &c, to 
living beings proves that the latter were created with special 
adaptations to the former in all the minutest details (Chapters 
VII., VIII, and XIV.); and I shall now proceed to apply the 
same philosophy in proof that the inorganic department was 
equally created with a special reference to all the details of or- 
ganic life, and that they were alike brought into being by direct 
acts of Creative Power. Of the earth, however, in this relation, 
but little need be said, since its adaptation to living beings, and 
to no other conceivable object, is manifest to all, and therefore 
distinctly implies, in its incalculable compass and unity of de- 
signs, an exercise of that Creative Power which man ascribes 
to himself, in an imitative sense, whenever he adapts one thing 
to the uses of another. Some of the grandest evidences of De- 
sign, however, in the earth's relation to living beings are less ob- 
vious than others; such, for example, as the precise inclination 
of its axis, any deviation from which would embarrass the con- 
veniences of organic life, as would also any change in the period- 
ical revolution of the earth upon its axis ; the exact density of 
the earth, by which it is critically adapted, in respect to gravita- 
tion, to all the different species of animals and plants, and by 
which, also, through an established solidity, the daj^s and years are 
maintained of an unvarying length ; the precise adaptation of 
the earth to all organic beings in respect to light and heat, by an 
exact adjustment of its distance from the Sun; the exact adapta- 
tions of the different earths, even of the primary rocks, in their 
elementary constituents and combinations, to the wants of the 
vegetable kingdom, and thus, indirectly, to the subsistence of the 
animal; all of which, individually as well as collectively, pro- 
claims the direct agency of an Omniscient Creative Power in 
adapting precisely the various physical means to the constitution 
of every plant and animal ; and equally, also, in so organizing 
every plant and animal upon one uniform, universal plan that 
it should harmonize throughout with all the details relative to 
light, heat, gravitation, air, water, &c. (Chapters VII., VIIL, 
and XIV.) 

With the exception of air and water, the foregoing considera- 
tions rarely enter into our contemplation of the designs that are 
relative to animals and plants, while each one of them is as sig- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 563 

nificant of a direct reference to living beings as atmospheric air 
and water, or that the vegetable kingdom was specifically de- 
signed for the subsistence of the animal. Could finite reason, 
therefore, bring into one comprehensive grasp all the evidences 
of design in the immense variety of the physical adaptations of 
the globe to organic beings and in connection with the evidences 
of design as displayed in every part of the organic fabric, the 
concentrated effect of such a display of Design would supersede 
the necessity of demonstrating, by the constitution of the primary 
rocks, their immediate dependence upon Creative Energy. 

And now, a word more as to atmospheric air and water, whose 
labyrinth of designs is known only to the diligent student of or- 
ganic nature and of the physical sciences. I shall, however, only 
glance at them in their vast relations to all living beings, both 
plants and animals, to whose existence they are so indispensable 
that they are about as much a part of the Design of every living 
being as any immediate parts of the beings themselves. Indeed, 
it may be with as much propriety affirmed that the respiratory 
organs, and the whole assimilating apparatus, do not enter into 
the design of animals and plants, and maintained that these parts 
were organized and adapted fortuitously to air and water (as we 
have seen to be no uncommon doctrine among scientific men), as 
to assume that these physical agents of life were accidentally pro- 
duced for the variety of indispensable wants of all living beings. 
These exigencies are as true of one as of the other ; and, were 
there only one of the physical agents, water only, the clear de- 
ductions from that one alone should confound the advocates of 
spontaneity of being, whether it respect its immediate necessity 
to animals and plants, or its uses in adapting the earth, in multi- 
farious aspects, to the farther necessities of its living tenants. 
But when to that one atmospheric air is added, and of the same 
universal importance, and when it is considered how exactly 
suited it is to the many thousand modifications of organs of res- 
piration in animals and plants, and the former yielding their car- 
bon in consequence, and the latter consuming the carbon through 
their respiratory process; and considering, also, how the atmos- 
phere subserves the peculiar exigencies of the feathered race, and 
how it unites with water to subserve, through the medium of that 
fluid, the respiration of aquatic animals, and farther, also, that the 



564 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

elements of air and water form three of the four principal ele- 
ments of the whole organic kingdom, it becomes too manifest for 
any elaborate proof, that no fertility of imagination can devise 
the sophistry which will expound the elaboration of either water 
or atmospheric air from a chaotic state of the earth by the prop- 
erties impressed upon matter, and carry with it the overwhelm- 
ing weight of those organic designs which attest the direct super- 
intendence of Infinite Wisdom. (See Chapter VII.) 

Whoever, therefore, rejects the immediate origin of either air 
or water in Creative Power must necessarily maintain the absurd 
doctrine of the spontaneity of living beings, both animals and 
plants. But if the latter be allowed to have depended upon Cre- 
ative Power it follows, from the demonstration, that the physical 
agents must be equally referred to the same Causation. These 
premises being obtained, proof of the same nature may be readily 
multiplied in an increasing ratio, such as the exigencies of light, 
&c, and thus by every superadded law the force of the demon- 
stration will be increased to a manifold extent. But we are now 
interested only in carrying the same philosophy to the earth in 
an aggregate sense ; which is done not only upon the ground of 
analogy as it respects its simply physical constitution, but espe- 
cially as the earth is exactly suited, in its physical condition, and 
astronomically, to carry out all the designs and final causes of 
living beings. Nay, more: the earth is so constituted as to be 
exactly suited to an immediate connection with the whole life of 
plants through the medium of their roots, while the foliage finds 
in atmospheric air and light equally universal and indispensable 
means of sustenance. And thus the demonstration shows that 
the earth is as much a part of the design of plants as are atmos- 
pheric air, and water, and light — the whole being in this respect 
on a par; while, also, from the absolute dependence of animals 
upon the vegetable kingdom, the constitution of the earth in its 
present exact condition is indispensable to the life of the entire 
animal kingdom. The universal adaptations of the earth, there- 
fore, in so many critical conditions, to all living beings preclude 
the possibility of its having been organized without the direct 
exercise of Creative Power; and, according to our demonstra- 
tion as to atmospheric air and water, a denial of the same Crea- 
tive Agency in relation to the earth necessarily implies, as in the 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 565 

other cases, a belief in the spontaneity of plants and animals, 
which I have shown to be a physical impossibility (Chapter VII.). 

By the same unanswerable reasoning, it is equally certain that 
the earth, atmosphere, water, general average temperature, and 
light, independently of their vast and indispensable relations to 
organic beings of a direct nature, were originally ordained by a 
flat of the Almighty, so as to give rise, through their mutual and 
harmonious concurrence, to many of the physical conditions, such 
as rain, ammonia, carbonic acid gas, &c, upon which organic life 
is farther dependent; and therefore, from the exact identity of 
organization and life in the most ancient as most recent beings, 
as denoted by all the fossil " medals," the whole must have been 
originally produced as it now exists. The proof of this might, 
indeed, be allowed to rest upon light alone (as now propagated 
by the sun), in its present relation to animals, and as indispensa- 
ble to the vegetable kingdom, upon which the animal depends. 
The former, in a direct sense, have, for example, the same visual 
organs now as at first, to testify to the exactness of our state- 
ments, and to the discomfiture of the doctrine of "extinctions;" 
while the organization of plants, in all its fundamental attributes, 
remains without change, and therefore the same exact light as 
now was indispensable to their organization at their first appear- 
ance upon earth. 

Connected with this demonstration should be, also, the abso- 
lute impossibility of explaining the existence of oxygen and 
nitrogen gases in their atmospheric relations, and oxygen and 
hydrogen gases as constituting water, upon the Plutonic or neb- 
ular hypothesis, or by any other theory than that of Creative 
Power. That oxygen and nitrogen gases should have gone off 
from a fiery intermixture of some sixty other elements to form 
atmospheric air, and oxj^gen and hydrogen gases should have 
extricated themselves to form water, and without regarding the 
evidences of design in their universal relations to plants and ani- 
mals, is not to be entertained, excepting by those who imagine 
that the sixteen or seventeen elements of which all plants and 
animals are composed disengaged themselves from the same 
blended assemblage. (See Chapter VII.) And here it should 
be duly considered that the nebular or Plutonic doctrine neces- 
sarily supposes something more than a simple state of fusion. It 



WG PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

supposes the existence of all things in the form of the simple 
elements of matter, and in chaotic intermixture. This is shown 
by the permanently gaseous state of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitro- 
gen, in their nncombined conditions, and by the numerous ele- 
ments which go to the formation of mica, feldspar, &c. Nor 
should we lose sight of the special fact that the oxygen and ni- 
trogen of the atmosphere do not exist in chemical union, but as 
a simple intermixture. And here it should be observed that the 
nebular hypothesis supposes that the elements went off from the 
jumble of more than sixty through their elective affinities, and 
thus united into special chemical compounds, while no such elect- 
ive attraction occurred between the component elements of the 
atmosphere ; although they readily unite chemically in the for- 
mation of nitric acid and nitrous oxide. This single example, 
therefore, must be carried to all other elements, whatever may 
be their affinities for each other, and some other theory must in- 
terpret their chemical combinations as they exist in the crystal- 
line rocks. This consideration should also be carried to what I 
have said of the hypothesis which assigns the origin of plants 
and animals to the emersion and coalescence of their sixteen or 
seventeen elements through their inherent properties. (Chapter 
VII.) Farther, as it respects atmospheric air, the peculiar adap- 
tation of its elements in their mixed condition increases a thou- 
sand-fold the absurdity of their supposed departure from their 
gaseous associates ; and, in being thus adapted in a very special 
manner to the exigencies of plants and animals, both as it respects 
respiration, and, as shown by Dulong, the refraction of light (being 
different in the latter respect from what would be the case were 
these elements chemically united), it greatly increases the objec- 
tions to the hypothesis of a fortuitous emersion of the elements, 
as does, also, the definite proportions in which they exist, as indis- 
pensable to every plant and animal. But suppose such an obvi- 
ous absurdity possible ; there would then remain the greater one 
of assuming that all living beings came into existence under the 
influence of this fortuitous atmosphere, as well as of water and 
light also, by the united agency of which all the beings were 
brought continuously into exact vital adaptations to those phys- 
ical agents respectively. 

ISTor may I neglect saying, in this fundamental view of our sub- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 567 

ject, that other things of less importance in the economy of life, 
but which contribute a very delicate test, must be assumed to 
have been elaborated by the atmosphere, since their harmonious 
relationships could not otherwise have happened; such as organ- 
izing the vocal apparatus of man, beasts, and birds, so as to im- 
part to the atmosphere those endless undulating movements 
which give rise to all the phenomena of speech, voice, song, &c. ; 
and it must have been equally tributary to the wonderful mech- 
anism of the ear, in all its varieties as they exist upon land, while 
water must have taken the same part in adjusting the organ in 
aquatic animals to their element. These agents, one or the other, 
in the cases respectively, must have also contributed towards 
methodizing that conductor of sensation, the auditory nerve, nor 
have ceased till they had suitably arranged the central part, or 
brain, which receives the transmitted impressions, and the Mind, 
by which the impressions are discerned. And so of light in re- 
spect to the eye, &c. Such a concurrence of circumstances could 
be the only mode of originating living beings if their origin de- 
pended upon "creative laws of nature;" while, also, as admitted 
by the Duke of Argyll and others, the supposition is necessarily 
involved that these laws or forces, and other agencies of inorganic 
nature acting under them, are endowed with ivill and intelligence 
(pp. 235, 245). Nay, more : the precise density of the earth, its 
exact distance from the sun, &c, must have been also, as I have 
shown, harmonious concurring causes in developing all the de- 
signs that exist in the organization and functions of every animal 
and plant — all of which is precisely what is meant by the " crea- 
tive laws of nature," the " parturitive powers of the earth," " spon- 
taneity of living beings," Darwinism, Spencerism, &c. If, how- 
ever, on the other hand, it be admitted that organic beings were 
created in a direct manner, it must be equally conceded that the 
same consistent Intelligence was as directly instrumental in bring- 
ing the earth, air, water, &c, into their present condition, since 
they form an indispensable part in the plan of Design in relation 
to living beings. 

Again, I may repeat, for what other conceivable purpose was 
nitrogen gas brought into being than for the important uses of 
animals and plants, both as an extensive element in their compo- 
sition, especially of animals (accomplished through a wonderful 



568 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

process carried on by the joint action of plants and many har- 
monious external agencies), and scarcely less necessary to the 
respiratory function of the whole department of the two living 
kingdoms ? None whatever. Moreover, it is the disposition of 
nitrogen gas to fly off from all compounds, and to break them up, 
excepting the living being; and there could be no gunpowder 
without this peculiarity. It is also a principal cause of the rapid 
decomposition of animals as soon as death takes place ; and upon 
this extraordinary fact I have founded a fundamental distinction 
between the living and dead compounds of animals, and thus 
proving the existence of a vital principle in total opposition to 
the forces of inorganic nature. (In works on the Philosophy of 
Vitality and Modus Operandi of Remedial Agents, 1842 ; and in 
Institutes of Medicine, pp. 34-36.) And again: what other use 
can be assigned for hydrogen gas than to constitute another of the 
principal elements of animals and plants, and serve, also, as the 
base of water. None whatever. Where else, or to what extent, 
do we meet either with nitrogen or hydrogen gases, than in atmos- 
pheric air, or water, or living beings ? Nowhere ; in any sense 
at all relative to our subject. 

The manifest Design in all the concurring facts now stated, 
each one having a clear reference to all the rest, and to nothing 
else, stamps all the hypotheses of chance or second causes as blind 
attempts in opposition not only to certain specific facts, and the 
most obvious evidences of Design, and to Revelation, but to the 
clearest demonstrations which can be afforded by the forces and 
laws that are impressed upon the whole inorganic kingdom, 
and, therefore, as nothing but "science falsely so called." Now, 
to turn all these proofs of the direct agency of an Omnipotent, In- 
telligent Being (and therefore the great proofs of the existence 
of such a Being), against His manifest agency in consummating 
His own Works, is precisely equivalent, in principle, to the soph- 
istry of the Pharisees, that Christ " did not cast out devils but through 
Beelzebub, the chief of devils." But, as remains to be yet farther 
seen, the most astonishing consideration attending the whole 
physical rationale, which excludes the direct agency of Creative 
Power as it respects the organization of the earth, is the total dis- 
regard of the ordinary operation of physical forces, which would 
have necessarily resulted in an inexpressible chaos of mineral 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EART 569 

compounds. This disregard of fundamental facts and laws would 
be the more astonishing, were it not that many enlightened Phys- 
iologists of the present day attribute the origin of the whole or- 
ganic kingdom to the fortuitous coalescence of sixteen or seven- 
teen elements of which each individual is composed. 

Perhaps I should now rest this inquiry ; having, as it appears 
to me, expounded the Eevelation of God to man in its only pos- 
sible meaning. I am not inclined, however, to leave any remain- 
ing important ground unoccupied. But before proceeding to 
other direct proof of the necessity of Creative Energy in the or- 
ganization of the earth, we must have the nebular hypothesis of 
its formation before us. It presents the condition of the earth 
before it was detached, as supposed, from the sun, and professes 
to resolve the problem of its reduction from a chaotic state of its 
elements into an elaborate organization, fitted for the uses of man, 
animals, and plants ; and that it is instrumental in providing the 
materials for the coal-formations. All that is essential to our 
purposes in the igneous hypothesis may, therefore, be quickly 
told. Bat its examination will be more extended; when it will 
be seen that all the facts are not only fatal to the hypothesis, but 
confirm what the constitution of the earth and all its vital rela- 
tions proclaim as to the direct agency of Creative Power in evolv- 
ing it from its condition of chaos. It will be seen, also, that, not- 
withstanding the instrumentality of the properties of matter in 
reducing the earth from its aqueous solution, some of the objec- 
tions about to be alleged against the nebular hypothesis apply 
equally to the old Neptunian. 

The Plutonic or nebular hypothesis of Theoretical Geology as- 
sumes that the earth, was originally a component part of the sun, 
and existed in a gaseous condition of an inconceivably exalted 
temperature, in which all the elements (more than sixty) were in 
chaotic mixture, and that as they cooled down the elements sep- 
arated themselves into distinct groups, to unite into the various 
exact crystalline compounds which make up the primary rocks.* 

* It is undoubtedly remarkable tbat the spectroscope gives plausibility to the opin- 
ion that the sun and earth, and the stars also, are more or less alike in composition. 
But this would only correspond with the analogies in composition that prevail among 
all the inhabitants of our globe ; all of which, too, were made out of the earth. The 
supposed coincidence, therefore, between the composition of the sun and earth no 
more proves the evolution of the latter from the sun than the coincidence in compo- 



570 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

A part of them went off, in the requisite number and propor- 
tions, to form the complex granite ; another group departed to 
organize the hornblendes ; others to syenite ; and others to make 
up the rarer crystalline structures ; while others went alone, indi- 
vidually, or along with oxygen gas, such as gold, silver, platinum, 
iron, copper, lead, tin, zinc, arsenic, &c, and their ores; and the 
hypothesis supposes that the process of cooling, and all the fore- 
going aggregations of the elements into the crystalline compounds 
with their water of crystallization, began while the earth was still 
attached as a rim to the circumference of the blazing sun. But 
the advocates of the origin of living beings in the spontaneous 
coalescence of the elements of matter begin with the earth in its 
finished state, with only two of the sixteen or seventeen elements 
of which animals and plants are composed in a distinct gaseous 
form, and all the others either solid or united into chemical com- 
pounds. (See Chapter VII.) 

And all that we have now seen is called "Science." Let us, 
then, invoke Science still farther to our aid in demonstrating the 
perversion to which it has been subjected. If " the Creator en- 
dowed the elements of matter with properties that enabled them 
to enter into union so as to result in the evolution of the earth," 
as we have seen, also, to be affirmed of animals and plants, " Sci- 
ence" will not assume that there was any special endowment for 
that particular purpose, but will allow that they possess the same 
qualifications now as at the day of their creation. But the most 
simple experiments with chemical affinities assure us of the cer- 
tainty that such a crude mixture of elementary substances, when 
undergoing condensation, would have resulted in an indistinguish- 
able mass of rubbish. It has been said, however, with much ex- 
ultation, that a few crystals of feldspar have been found on the 
walls of a furnace.* But how they got there ; whether by acci- 

sition between man and plants proves that the human race sprang immediately from 
a mushroom. 

* This celebrated discovery is noticed in the following manner by the Rev. Dr. 
Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology : 

"Professor Kersten has found distinctly-formed crystals of prismatic feldspar on 
the walls of a furnace in which copper slate and copper ores had been melted. This 
discovery is very important, in a geological point of view, from its bearing on the the- 
ory of the origin of crystalline rocks, in which feldspar is usually so large an ingredi- 
ent. Hitherto every attempt to make feldspar crystals by artificial means has failed." 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 571 

dent, design, or by the decomposing and recombining power of the 
furnace, or whether they were genuine crystals of feldspar, re- 
mains a question. The water of crystallization, however, is propor- 
tionally small in this mineral, though less so in some of its vari- 
eties. Let it be considered, also, that feldspar is composed of six 
elements, silicon, aluminium, potassium, calcium, iron, oxygen, and 
of very various fusibilities ; and its universality and abundance 
in granite and syenite must assure every unprejudiced mind that 
there is about as great a chemical improbability that the several 
elements of feldspar should have gone off from more than fifty 
others to form the most extensive mineral compound of the 
globe, and in a crystalline state, as that the sixteen or seventeen 
elements of plants and animals should have emerged from their 
mineral combinations after the solidification of the earth, and 
have organized themselves into the various animal and vegeta- 
ble tribes. It is, however, through the doctrine of the origin of 
living beings in the elements, in virtue of their inherent proper- 
ties, that we come to understand how the cosmographers carry 
the same assumption to the scarcely less unique organization of 
the crystalline rocks, and where the sophistry is far less easily 
exposed. But it is as true of feldspar as it is of organic com- 
pounds, that if the Chemist had in his hands all the elements of 
which it is composed, and in their exact proportions, his attempt 
to unite them into that crystal would result in a confused mix- 
ture of many compounds. 

If, therefore, the nebular hypothesis be thus manifestly con- 
tradicted hj a single component part of granite, the objection is 
increased in a prodigious ratio by the same obstacles which are 
presented by mica, another crystalline constituent of granite. 
This crystal is composed of not less than ten elements, having 
six that belong to feldspar, though in other proportions, and 
four of which that crystal is destitute, viz., lithium, manganese, 
magnesium, and fluorine. Some variations occur in different 
specimens ; but it may be stated, in a sufficiently universal sense, 
that the same elements, and in about the same proportions, 
make up the composition of this crystal. Now it is not doubted 
that, by no process whatever can the chemist reunite these con- 
stituents into a decompounded scale of mica of any appreciable 
weight; nor, as in the case of feldspar, can he bring any analo- 



572 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

gies from the existing operation of natural causes. The same 
affirmations may be made of hornblende, which is substituted 
wholly, or in part only, for mica in granitic syenite, but along 
with the other constituents of granite, and which is composed 
of nine elements. It is also worth saying that, according to the 
demonstrations which will have been made, it is in vain to as- 
sume that syenite has been universally in a state of fusion be- 
cause it is found occupying, as it is said, unexpected positions, 
as in overlying clay-slate. Under these circumstances it has 
been thrown up, and in such a state of fusion, arising from local 
chemical actions, as to overspread the slate; and in all such 
cases it will be found that the crystalline structure of the primi- 
tive rock has been effaced by the heat. An example of this 
kind occurs in the extensive trap-region on the western shore 
of the Hudson Kiver, where the primitive granitic rock, which 
is readily fusible in a grate of anthracite coal, is occasionally 
found adherent to the molten trap and basalt; and it supplies 
also an example in which mica is present along with hornblende 
— thus greatly complicating the problem relative to the organ- 
ization of the primary rocks by the presence of four constituent 
crystals. ISTor may I neglect this occasion to remark, that it 
will be seen that such examples which have been produced in 
behalf of the nebular hypothesis are in total contradiction to it. 
Pluto has here and there taken possession of what was orig- 
inally deposited from water, and he has left ample traces of this 
in not doing his work more thoroughly. 

If it be said that quartz, the remaining constituent of granite, 
is deposited from water under our observation, it may be replied 
that it is so in its compounded state, and consists only of the two 
elements, silicon and oxygen. The fact, however, is directly op- 
posed to the nebular hypothesis, and as directly in favor of the 
Biblical statement of solution. A simple solution of mica or of 
feldspar, could it be effected, would probably, like quartz, re- 
sult in the same crystals on evaporating the water; but no such 
result would be obtained if any degree of decomposition should 
arise. But were it possible to form those complex substances 
out of their constituent elements, it would in no respect affect 
the impossibilities of the nebular hypothesis. Were the chemist 
to attempt their manufacture, it would be with their precise com- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OP THE EARTH. 573 

ponent parts, not with their intermixture with fifty other el- 
ements. It is true that many crystals whose elementary con- 
stituents are, like quartz, very few in number, may be readily 
produced in the laboratory out of certain compounds, such as 
are formed by acids and alkaline bases, &c. But no one of 
them, nor any other to which the water of crystallization is nec- 
essary, can be produced by caloric. It must be from the state 
of some solution. It is alleged, however, in proof of the neb- 
ular hypothesis, that pyroxene and augite will crystallize from 
a state of fusion, as seen in lavas ; but they contain no water. 
The same, also, may be affirmed of the simple crystalline sub- 
stances, specular iron ore, titanium, &c, which are produced by 
volcanic and furnace heat. Whenever, also, any of these sub- 
stances are composed of other elements than a metal and oxy- 
gen, such as pyroxene, they must exist naturally in that com- 
pounded condition. As such they are produced neither by vol- 
canic nor furnace heat, but simply assume a crystalline condi- 
tion after undergoing fusion. 

But again: a greater difficulty. When Theoretical Geology 
starts with the union of the various elements into their symmet- 
rical compounds, and begins its work of condensation, it neces- 
sarily supposes that they all existed, at that critical juncture, at 
a common temperature. Now what an unscientific condition of 
things is this for the supposed union of the elements, and the 
condensation of the compounds themselves. Take, in the first 
place, what is obvious to the senses of all, the metals, and some 
other things of easy comprehension. The lowest temperature 
which is necessary to maintain them in a gaseous state presents 
every variety beyond a degree which can not be artificially pro- 
duced, to that low degree which will volatilize mercury, quick- 
silver, &c. And so, vice versa, are the differences of tempera- 
ture at which they will respectively assume a fluid or a solid 
form. 

How, then, did arsenic, lead, the ores of quicksilver, bismuth, 
tin, &c, solidify from their gaseous state, or only, if it be prefer- 
red, from a state of simple fusion, simultaneously with platinum, 
gold, &c, according to the requirements of the nebular hypothe- 
sis ? Platinum is fusible only by the hydro-oxygen blow-pipe, 
and when, therefore, it condenses from a simply fluid to a solid 



574 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

state, it is at thousands of degrees above the point of condensation 
for many of the other metals. But platinum occurs in connec- 
tion with several other metals, some of which condense from their 
molten state at comparatively very low temperatures. How, 
then, got these metals in ? The problem is as difficult for the 
igneous hypothesis as the presence of water in the crystalline 
rocks. But it is rendered still more difficult by the presence of 
four metals which are scarcely found anywhere else than as in- 
corporated with platinum. By what possible chance, therefore, 
did these very rare metals disengage themselves from the univer- 
sal gaseous mixture, and seek out platinum in its rare localities, 
and go nowhere else? And so of gold, which condenses from a 
state of fusion at a little below 2016° Fahr., its melting tempera- 
ture. But gold is often alloyed with other metals, particularly 
with silver, tellurium, and mercurj^. How got these metals in, 
especially tellurium, which condenses at about 800°, and mercury, 
which subsides from a state of vapor at about 660°? And what 
farther of mercury? There are native amalgams with gold and 
silver; but, upon the nebular hypothesis, the mercurial element 
would have been far distant in a volatile state when the latter 
had consolidated. Cinnabar, or the sulphuret of mercury, is 
readily volatilized, and yet it is found in gneiss, from which it 
is driven off by a common forge. And arsenic, also, which vola- 
tilizes at 356°, without melting, occurs extensively and intimately 
incorporated with cobalt, iron, copper, lead, and silver, especially 
the two first. What, therefore, was just said of mercury is equally 
applicable to arsenic in its combinations with either of the fore- 
going metals. It abounds in cobalt, and this combination is 
mostly seen in mountains of granite, and in mica-slate, either in 
imbedded masses or in veins disseminated through the rocks. 
Metallic arsenic is also found in the midst of the primary rocks. 
In these rocks occur also, in great abundance, the sulphurets of 
iron and copper ; and the process of smelting shows how readily 
the sulphur is driven off, and therefore how opposed is this com- 
bination to the nebular hypothesis. Lead, which condenses from 
a state of fusion at a little less than 612°, embraces in the nu- 
merous varieties of its ores sixteen other elementary substances, 
among which are gold, silver, sulphur, and phosphorus. Where 
would have been the last two when the metallic constituents un- 
derwent condensation? 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OP THE EARTH. 575 

I need not speak of the singular incompatibility of sodium, the 
base of marine salt, with water, nor of its presence in many min- 
erals, nor dwell upon the fact that chlorine, the other element of 
marine salt, is a gaseous substance, and readily unites with water. 
But we may be content with the fact that chlorine is found only 
in combination with sodium, with the exception of some rare 
compounds of mercury, silver, and some other metals, and then 
only in a small quantity. But chemistry forms with this gas, 
next to oxj^gen, the most extensive series of combinations with 
other substances, for its affinities are such that it unites with 
nearly all the simple elements, metallic and non-metallic. Con- 
trary to the laboratory, however, the nebular hypothesis supposes 
that this gas sought out and limited itself to sodium ; when, with- 
out a miracle, it would have seized upon nearly all the elements 
in the Plutonic mixture. Consider, also, the obvious design in 
this limitation of chlorine to sodium, resulting in a compound 
indispensable to man and animals, and abundant in their fluids. 
It is, indeed, from common salt that we obtain, directly or indi- 
rectly, all the supplies of the various compounds of sodium. 
Again : so great is the affinity of chlorine for hydrogen gas, that, 
if mixed together at a high temperature, their union is sudden 
and attended by an explosion. 

Potassium should also receive a brief consideration. This 
metal is found in about thirty species of minerals, and is a com- 
ponent part of feldspar, one of the most universal. Both heat 
and water are incompatible with it, and it exists in combination 
with oxygen in the form of potash. It burns with a vivid flame 
at a moderate heat, in the presence of oxygen, and equally so 
when it comes in contact with water. It is, therefore, very un- 
necessary to multiply remarks upon a subject of such obvious 
import. 

Nor am I disposed to leave this fruitful topic without a more 
critical analysis, and glancing at those multifarious combinations 
of oxygen gas which, by their endless range of usefulness, and by 
their contrast with the limitation of chlorine to an union with so- 
dium, declare as distinctly the direct exercise of Creative Power 
in the organization of the earth as it is manifest in the animal and 
vegetable tribes. "We have seen that the two gases, oxygen and 
chlorine, have strong affinities for other gases, the metals, &c, and 



576 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

readily combine with them. Upon this principle the nebular 
hypothesis assumes that oxygen elected all the nitrogen from the 
chaotic mixture and formed atmospheric air, but not through 
their chemical or any other affinities, for they exist in a state of 
simple intermixture ; it assumes, also, that another portion of ox- 
ygen seized upon all the hydrogen to form water, to the exclu- 
sion of chlorine, which has a greater affinity for hydrogen ; that 
other portions united with sulphur, carbon, &c, and formed most 
of the acids that exist in nature ; while other portions entered 
into simple combinations with the metals and metalloids — form- 
ing the oxides of metals and the earths ; but all existing at the 
time of these unions in a gaseous state, and all condensable at 
temperatures as various as the numerous elements and their com- 
binations ; and in this way, according to the nebular hypothesis, 
there ultimately emerged from the ignited chaotic mixture near- 
ly the entire mineral kingdom, with all its exact adaptations to 
the various wants of living beings, and in which oxygen gas had 
a most important agency. 

The same rule, therefore, should apply to any other substance 
situated like oxygen, and bearing strong relations to it in its af- 
finities to other elements. In chlorine we have a test. From 
the amount of sea-salt, chlorine should have been one of the most 
abundant constituents of the chaotic mixture of elements. It 
possesses, also, as we have seen, a far more powerful affinity for 
the metals and metalloids than oxygen, and combines with most 
of them at the temperature of the atmosphere, and far more read- 
ily and rapidly when the temperature is raised. Here, then, it is 
seen at once that, instead of oxides of the metals and the abun- 
dance in which oxygen is incorporated in the substances that 
make up the primary crystalline rocks, there should have been 
chlorides, or at least an excess over the oxides. But the remark- 
able fact exists that chlorine is scarcely found in inorganic nature 
except in marine salt; and notwithstanding its affinities for most 
other elements, its combination with sodium is the only one it 
can form that is useful to man and animals. 

Farther: how will the nebular hypothesis explain, upon any 
conceivable principle, the simultaneous union of oxygen with all 
the hydrogen, so as to form the waters of the oceans, and nearly 
all the chlorine of creation with nearly all the sodium (to say 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OE THE EARTH. 577 

nothing farther of the strong affinities of chlorine for hydrogen), 
and combined those two compounds together when their ele- 
ments united? And what as to the formation of water itself, 
whose base is hydrogen gas — the element which is used for the 
inflation of balloons? It need not be said that hydrogen gas, as 
soon as created, would have been, according to the nebular hy- 
pothesis, forever beyond the reach of oxygen gas. There can, of 
course, be no evasion of these difficulties by assuming that oxy- 
gen united with the hydrogen, and the chlorine with the sodium, 
at some time after the condensation of the rocks, for this would 
greatly increase the absurdities of the hypothesis by rending it 
into fragments, and would be at once contradicted by the very 
water which enters into the structure of the primary rocks. But 
if such proof be not sufficient, then I say that under no possible 
circumstances could oxygen and hydrogen have got together so 
as to form water, unless created in union. This will be admitted 
when it is considered that the specific gravity of hydrogen is 
only about 68, while that of oxygen is greater than that of at- 
mospheric air, being about 1102. Hence the rise of balloons. 
Nor should the reader fail of carrying this weighty matter of spe- 
cific gravity into the entire constitution of the globe, and he will 
find that it crushes every theory of the earth's formation except- 
ing the Mosaic. 

Let us, however, assume, for the sake of the argument, that all 
the elementary gaseous substances that go to the formation of the 
primary rocks were capable of forming themselves into the spe- 
cial groups out of a nebular confusion, and of uniting into the 
various crystalline compounds of which these rocks are com- 
posed. How, then, upon the nebular hypothesis, did those com- 
ponent parts of granite, &c, which are fusible at very different 
temperatures, become consolidated at the same moment, as they 
necessarily must to have formed this compound rock ? It is sim- 
ply a physical impossibility — leaving out of the question the sym- 
metrical arrangement of the different crystals side by side of each 
other. But let us now superadd the metals, and suppose the most 
infusible constituents of the incandescent mass, such as the pri- 
mary rocks, platinum, gold, &c, to have been reduced to a fluid 
state ; platinum, gold, iron, copper, &c, would have gravitated far 
below the metalliferous rocks which have been projected above 

37 



578 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the surface, and they would have remained in a fluid state long 
after the rocks had consolidated ; and as to antimony, mercury, 
arsenic, sulphur, which the primitive rocks embrace in some form 
or other, they would, of course, have continued suspended above 
the surface of the earth in a volatile state long after the conden- 
sation of the rocks, and would have finally settled down upon 
them in such blended alloj^s as would have rendered them nearly 
useless in the arts. And then, again, as to water and atmospheric 
air, these, of course, would have been the last in the order of dis- 
jointed results of the supposed igneous condition, especially wa- 
ter. And whence came the hydrogen for one, and nitrogen for the 
other? Information is here particularly desired, as there is no 
hydrogen excepting as it exists in water, and no nitrogen except- 
ing in the atmosphere, in any sense relative to our subject. 

In the mean time, it can not be doubted that the sun and moon 
would have established a tidal motion in the fluid mass, by which 
the blended condition of all things would have been, if possible, 
rocked into a more inexpressibly chaotic state than had resulted 
from the universal intermixture of the elementary substances. 
Miles in thickness of the consolidated earth must have obtained 
before the surface would have ceased to be shattered into frag- 
ments and embowelled in the liquid mass. Not a crystal could 
have formed from the centre to the circumference, for crystalliza- 
tion requires the most perfect repose. And such, indeed, as we 
have seen, would have been generally the result of an aqueous 
solution of the compounded materials had they been left to their 
own properties alone for their crystallization and the symmetrical 
arrangement of their crystals. Although all this is obvious from 
the effects of gravitation, the most important and uniform of the 
laws of nature, let us hear an authority which will not be ques- 
tioned where facts are admitted in direct conflict with his own 
advocacy of the prevailing geological speculations. It is a good 
exemplification, also, of the difficulty with which facts are dis- 
cerned and properly applied when it is feared that they may 
contradict a favorite hypothesis. I refer to the distinguished 
Bakewell, who, in his elaborate work on Geology, remarks that — 

"There are certainly circumstances that favor the theory of 
central heat ; but it must he confessed that it is also accompanied 
with difficulties not easily to be removed. If the earth be com- 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 579 

posed of a solid crust or shell surrounding a fluid mass, this in- 
ternal fluid would be subjected to the attraction of the sun and 
moon ; or, in other words, would have its regular tides. We are 
not acquainted with any counteracting influence to prevent the 
impulse of these tides upon the solid shell." 

And here is another, a late and high authority to the same ef- 
fect — Dr. C. F. Winslow. In his work on Force and Nature he 
elaborates the doctrine relative to volcanoes, and the result is 
expressed as follows : 

"I have endeavored to show that this planet is not only not 
solid throughout, but that its interior conditions are both fluid 
and actively mobile and elastic ; that these elastic matters are con- 
tained as a boiling, surging nucleus within a crystallized shell ; that 
this shell is pierced in many places, and is universally subject to 
tension, blows, shocks, fissures, faults, cleavages, and fluctuations of 
outline, in consequence of contractions and reactions of its fluid 
nucleus." 

That is a very accurate description of the progressive forma- 
tion of the globe according to the nebular hypothesis. Such, 
exactly, would have been the condition of the earth as soon as 
cooled down to a fluid state, and such the effects of the tidal mo- 
tions — unceasingly churning together all the materials of the 
molten, "boiling, surging nucleus." If, also, the supposed mo- 
tions of the interior of the earth produce the effects upon "the 
crystcdlized shell" that are represented by our Author, the reader 
will have no difficulty in seeing the impossibility of the forma- 
tion of a shell in a "crystallized" condition. But our Author 
in thus demolishing the nebular hypothesis was employed in 
sustaining another with a view to its confirmation. This, how- 
ever, is only an example of many other assumptions, having the 
same object in view, that have been brought into conflict with 
each other. With the design of applying the results of volcanic 
action to the advantage of the nebular hypothesis, the disturbance 
of the earth's surface is apt to be much exaggerated. Moreover, 
all the attendants of volcanic eruptions are readily susceptible of 
explanation by the decompositions which are at work in various 
quarters of the globe in its solid contents — resulting in the pro- 
duction of heat, explosive forces, &c. 

It is remarkable, also, that Sir Charles Lyell, who believes 



580 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

in the igneous formation of granite, controverts the doctrine of 
an existing molten state of the interior of the earth, and turns 
against it the admitted necessity of a tidal movement — although 
this imputed source of "central heat" was important to his sup- 
posed universal tropical temperature at the era of the coal-for- 
mations. Our Author, in the first place, quotes Cordier's estimate 
that, " when the fluidity of the globe was perfect (or when it 
had cooled down from its nebulous to a fluid state), the rise and 
fall of those ancient land tides could not have been less than from 
thirteen to sixteen feet." He then goes on to say — 

"Now, granting, for a moment, that these tides in the internal 
melted ocean have become so feeble as to be incapable of lifting 
up every six hours the fissured shell of the earth, may we not 
ask whether, during eruptions, jets of lava ought not to be thrown 
up from the craters of volcanoes, when the tides rise ? and wheth- 
er the same phenomena would not be conspicuous in Stromboli, 
where there is always lava boiling in the crater? Ought not the 
fluid, if connected with the interior ocean, to disappear on the 
ebbing of its tides ?" 

Although the foregoing appears to be the only objection which 
Theoretical Geology has suggested with any force against the 
supposed "internal melted ocean," the reader will not fail to ap- 
preciate the value of the admitted tidal motion in connection with 
the more demonstrative facts and arguments which I shall have 
produced against the supposed formation of the earth out of a 
fiery, nebulous condition ; while the tidal motion alone is all- 
sufficient to show the impossibility of the formation of the sym- 
metrical crystalline rocks, which compose the great mass of the 
globe, from a fluid condition, whether in the form of a melted 
mass or of aqueous solution, without the direct co-operating 
agency of Creative Power. 

But a word more as to Sir Charles Lyell's difficulty with 
the reputed molten interior of the earth. M. Cordier estimates 
the heat of the earth's centre at 450,000° Fahr., and this is a se- 
rious obstacle with Sir Charles to the " Glacial Theory," so im- 
portant a substitute for the Mosaic Narrative of the Flood in ex- 
pounding the distribution of the boulders and other diluvial drift ; 
while the same logician requires, at another time, an exalted tem- 
perature of the earth for the completion of the primary schistose 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 581 

rocks, and for the universal growth of tropical plants at the " car- 
boniferous era," although contradicted in the latter case bj the 
simultaneous growth of plants that are now peculiar to high 
northern climates. (See Appendix III.) 

What I have suggested in regard to the water of crystallization 
may be applied with a crushing effect against the nebular hypoth- 
esis, if, indeed, the force of the objection have not been already 
appreciated by the reader. "Whence, I ask, came the water which 
abounds in granite and other crystalline rocks? Where was it 
when the rocks were consolidated at a temperature of thousands 
of degrees above that of steam, or how could the rocks have crys- 
tallized without it? If there be any remaining virtue in facts, 
in their conflict with error, this one alone proves the original ex- 
istence of the primitive rocks in a state of solution by that water, 
in part, which we find thus incorporated, and which the Word 
of God has declared to have been blended with the other mate- 
rials of the globe in its chaotic state ; though I do not now pre- 
sent the latter as an authority. Theoretical Geology has some- 
times, in its perplexities about the primitive rocks, drifted away 
from the nebular hypothesis, and in some unexplained manner 
brought the crystalline rocks into a state of fusion under a vast 
superincumbent weight of water, without any notable object, and 
thus assuming the existence of water against the plainest impossi- 
bilities. Even the vigilant Professor Silliman, in his Appendix 
to Bakewell's Geology, falls into the following remark : 

" If granite had been melted under atmospheric pressure 
alone, or when there was no atmosphere, its surface would have 
been inflated and porous, like the upper current of lithoid lavas ; 
but if melted under the pressure of water, it may be, of several 
miles in height, it would, on cooling from fusion, crystallize, and 
become, as we see it, a solid mass." That it would have become 
"a solid mass" is indisputable ; but it would have been a mass 
of all things, excepting water, blended in intimate mixture, with- 
out any crystallization whatever. 

Theoretical Geology, however, is not yet convinced ; and we 
will, therefore, try this question by the undoubted igneous rocks, 
which have come into this condition since the completion of the 
globe — trap and basalt, for example. Here the primary crys- 
talline rock has been fused by volcanic heat into an apparently 



582 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

almost homogeneous mass, all crystalline structure obliterated, 
and the water of crystallization dissipated. Examples of this 
occur in the lofty range of trap and basalt which form the "Pal- 
isades," in the immediate vicinity of New York, where the orig- 
inal rock, a syenitic granite, is occasionally found adherent in 
small masses. This primitive rock is composed of four crys- 
tals — quartz, feldspar, mica, and hornblende, distinctly formed 
and in juxtaposition. I have detached this rock from the trap, 
and upon placing it upon burning anthracite coal fused it into 
trap — thus obliterating the crystalline structure. Here, too, is 
exemplified the fact that the higher the temperature the more 
impossible would it have been for the primitive rocks to have 
assumed a crystalline structure, since the appearance of that 
structure is more perfectly obliterated in the basalt than in the 
trap. This difference of temperature is also shown by its effects 
upon the granular, sedimentary, fusible stratum through which 
the Palisades have been obtruded, as those portions which lie 
in contact with the basalt are far more extensively fused and 
consolidated than such as are contiguous to the trap. Probably 
no other similar formation supplies so good an opportunity of 
observing the volcanic origin of trap and basalt, and the effects 
of heat upon the primitive rock in converting it into those con- 
ditions ; for in this locality there exists the concurrent evidence 
of an absolute fusion of the original rock, and that which is sup- 
plied by the fusion of the aqueous deposit of the disintegrated 
granitic rock through which the trap has been erupted. In 
this locality is demonstrated, also, the geological error that 
"granitic and trap rocks pass into each other." In certain other 
localities large masses of granitic rocks, possessing their natural 
crystalline structure, are found associated with masses of trap. 
Here the granitic rock has been subjected to a fusible heat only 
in one or more sections, not almost universally, as in the Pali- 
sades of the Hudson Eiver ; and Theoretical Geology, without 
reference to the crystallized condition in one portion and its ob- 
literation in the other, converts its fallacious inference into an 
important fact for the igneous origin of granite. It is thus said 
by Sir Charles Lyell, that — 

"It would be easy to multiply examples to prove that the 
granitic and trap rocks pass into each other, and are merely 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 583 

different forms which the same elements have assumed, according 
to the different circumstances under which they have consoli- 
dated from a state of fusion." Fallacies of this nature are des- 
tined to bring upon Geology a settled distrust of its statements 
of the most important facts. 

It will be of no avail to Theoretical Geology that masses of 
basalt often assume, on cooling, a prismatic form ; for its origi- 
nal constituent parts have become intimately incorporated to- 
gether, without water of crystallization, and equivalent to a 
substance as simple as platinum or gold with the several other in- 
corporated metals. And how clearly does this prove the fal- 
lacy of the geological interpretation of the seams of quartz, 
feldspar, &c, that often traverse large masses of granite and 
gneiss, which assumes that they have been injected, in a state 
of fusion, into imaginary fissures ; although, also, they often ap- 
pear like net-work, and are in a perfectly crystalline condition. 
And here we may derive from Theoretical Geology another 
very satisfactory proof that the granitic veins have never been 
in a state of fusion, and that the stratified rocks to which the 
following quotation refers were of contemporaneous origin, and 
were owing to the same violent causes, as will soon appear yet 
farther. The quotation simply expresses what is common in 
works upon Geology. Thus it is said that — 

" The veins of granite are of every size and shape, and they 
run in all directions through the superincumbent strata; and sim- 
ilar irregularities exist in larger and less ramified masses. True, 
they are rarely superincumbent upon the stratified rocks, and 
hence some have inferred that they could not have been erupted 
like lava, which often spreads over the .surface to a great extent." 
— Prof. Hitchcock's Geology of Massachusetts. And so, also, 
Lyell, and others. 

Granite is said to have been occasionally, though very rarely, 
found overlying stratified rocks and even chalk, and has been 
seen in the form of veins in stratified limestone ; which has been 
attributed to the eruption of granite in a state of fusion. But it 
has resulted from the disintegration of granite and the action of 
water, as in the case of the veins which appear in stratified 
rocks. The following example from Sir Charles Lyell's Ge- 
ology will show us how it is done, and a subsequent consolidation 



i 



584 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

upon a large scale. Thus — " This disintegration of granite is a 
striking feature of large districts in Auvergne. The rock may 
with propriety be said to have the rot, for it crumbles to pieces 
in the hand." But notwithstanding this, Sir Charles, for the 
purpose of showing that granite is sometimes injected in a state 
of fusion into stratified limestone, with its crystals unimpaired, 
presents " a diagram from a sketch of Dr. McCulloch, represent- 
ing the junction of the granite of Glen Tilt with a mass of strati- 
fied limestone and schist." On turning to McCulloch's account 
of the formation, we find that it is a mass of rubbish occasioned 
by the " rotting " of granite and its transportation by water along 
with the other materials. Thus, Dr. McCulloch — 

"In every instance all particular and minute regularity disap- 
pears whenever the limestone beds are found in the immediate 
vicinity of the granite. They are so intermingled and blended 
with the accompanying strata and with the granite that the whole 
mass appears to be in a state of utter confusion.'''' 

I shall now reproduce an objection to the igneous hypothesis 
that it may be more fully considered ; and it will be seen to ap- 
ply equally to the old Neptunian, or to any other hypothesis 
which excludes the direct interposition of Creative Energy, and 
to operate as a physical impossibility against every doctrine in 
cosmography but the Mosaic. The reader will also observe that 
the objection is more or less associated with such as have been 
already alleged, and should be considered in connection with 
them. 

We will take granite for our demonstration. Here we find, as 
already seen, three unique crystalline compounds universally 
present, side by side, individually and collectively, in the very bo- 
soms of each other, compactly joined but not agglutinated ; and 
equally so in the lowest depths of the universal mass as at the 
surface. Now, it will be seen, upon a moment's reflection, which, 
appears never to have been bestowed upon the subject, that it is 
physically impossible that those very diverse constituent parts 
should have been thus evolved out of either a state of fusion or 
of solution, and methodically arranged in juxtaposition by any 
natural process alone ; while the nebular hypothesis must take 
along with it the crushing assumption that the numerous ele- 
ments of mica and feldspar condensed simultaneously into those 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 585 

component parts and side by side of each other, along with the less 
complex quartz, throughout the universal rock — never intermin- 
gling, and never resulting in any other compound in all the gran- 
ite of the globe. Nevertheless, the crystals often penetrate each 
other, but without coalescing, which, as Theoretical Geology ad- 
mits, "proves that they were all consolidated and crystallized at 
the same time." It is not only an absurdity to suppose that the 
elements could have emerged from the general mixture so as to 
have formed the crystalline compounds, but equally so that the 
elements could have cooled clown simultaneously so as to form 
the compounds into a fluid state, or that the compounds thus 
formed could have cooled down simultaneously to the condi- 
tion of solids — so very different from each other are the tem- 
peratures at which the elements exist in a gaseous state, or the 
crystalline compounds in a state of fusion. But could this con- 
dition of things have obtained, we are then met by the certainty 
that the fluid mass, whether in a state of fusion or of solution, 
must have been incorporated in all its parts, without the aid of 
Creative Energy. 

Admitting, however, a sort of instinctive separation of the ele- 
ments from their supposed chaotic mixture, so as to have formed 
isolated spots of fluid matter ready to be consolidated simultane- 
ously into mica, feldspar, and quartz, as well as the accompany- 
ing metals, &c, and granting, also, the farther physical impossi- 
bility of the water of crystallization, the assumption that these 
spots arranged themselves to undergo simultaneous consolidation 
into the three distinct crystalline substances that make up the 
universal granite, and these three crystals occupying a combined 
and systematic relation, all side by side, individually and collect- 
ively, throughout the great mass of the globe, is as absurd as the 
assumption that man, animals, and plants came into being through 
a natural coalescence of their elements. (See Chapter VII.) 

If we glance for a moment at syenite, where hornblende is 
either substituted for mica, or at other times is associated as a 
fourth crystal with the other component parts of granite, or the 
substitution of chlorite for mica in another variety of granite, 
astonishment increases at this diversity of organization. And 
although, as we have seen, on the one hand, if mica, or feld- 
spar, or hornblende, were subjected to fusion, their condition as 



586 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

such would be obliterated ; and, on the other hand, if either could 
be dissolved in water in a separate state, each one would proba- 
bly come out again the same thing after slow evaporation ; yet, 
could a fragment of granite be thus dissolved, all the crystals, on 
a like evaporation, would be either blended into one apparently 
homogeneous mass, as would occur in a state of fusion, or, more 
probably, a partial intermixture only, while a larger proportion 
of each crystal would be superimposed upon that which is least 
soluble respectively, since the order of their deposition depends 
upon their relative solubility. To restore the fragment of gran- 
ite, therefore, from a state of solution or of fusion would require 
the interposition of Creative Energy. The Chemist, however, 
may as reasonably undertake this experiment as he has attempted 
the fabrication of living beings (Chapter VII.). Moreover, as to 
the old Neptunian doctrine, another insuperable objection pre- 
sents itself in the fact that the deposition of the crystals could 
not take place without an evaporation of the water. So, therefore, 
according to our doctrine of solution, unless Creative Energy had 
interposed, there could have been no formation of granite or oth- 
er rocks without an evaporation of the waters that held them 
in solution. But, notwithstanding no such evaporation has oc- 
curred, all the mica, feldspar, hornblende, &c, has totally disap- 
peared from the oceans, and nothing remains in union with their 
waters but those very soluble substances, chloride and sulphate 
of soda, calcareous salts, &c. There remains, therefore, the alter- 
native only of supposing that Creative Power brought the con- 
stituents of granite, &c, into being in a state of aqueous solution, 
and then proceeded, by the continued exercise of His Power, to 
bring about their systematic organization by co-operating with 
the natural operation of the properties which He had impressed 
upon matter ; or, that He created the primary rocks in the con- 
dition in which they now exist — the latter of which is contra- 
dicted not only by the principles of Design, as denoted by the 
other progressive works of Creation, but by the constitution of 
the rocks and other surrounding facts. And why should not 
the Creator have proceeded with His work in respect to the earth 
with as much consistency as He demonstrably did in a direct cre- 
ation of man, animals, and plants out of the materials of the earth? 
Nevertheless, having created the component parts of the earth in 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 587 

a state of solution, it was characteristic of a Designing Power that 
he should employ their inherent properties, so far as adequate, in 
bringing them into their organized condition ; just as He used 
the materials of the earth in creating living beings ; while, in re- 
spect to the latter, the elements of matter having none of the 
properties of life, the production of those properties was more 
exclusively a direct act of Creative Power. (See Chapters VI. 
and VII.) " True it is," says Theoretical Geology through one 
of its almost reluctant advocates, "Creative Power could call the 
rocks into being ; but no analogy countenances the truth of such 
a supposition." But that is a totally different view of the case 
from my doctrine of the exercise of Creative Power through the 
instrumentality of the properties of matter, and through which 
the results are closely allied to such as arise from the natural op- 
eration of the properties. 

In stating the component parts of the primary rocks, I should 
have adverted to their adventitious decorations, the garnets, to- 
pazes, tourmalines, emeralds, &c, which go with the rest in de- 
claring the necessity of an aqueous solution, and of their consoli- 
dation, as we have seen of accompanying metals, at the moment 
when the containing rocks were solidified.* Nor should I neg- 
lect, in the foregoing connection, an insuperable objection to the 
nebular hypothesis which is supplied by Professor Tyndall, 
though not so intended. It occurs in his work on u Heat consid- 
ered as a Mode of Motion.' 1 '' Thus — 

"If the Sun," he says, "be formed of matter like our Earth, 
some means must exist of restoring to him his wasted power. The 
facts are so extraordinary that the soberest hypothesis regarding 
them must appear wild." "No earthly substance with which we 

* My Essay on "Theoretical Geology" embracing the arguments in the foregoing 
text against the nebular or igneous hypothesis, as derived from the constitution of 
the crystalline rocks, appeared originally, and in all the details as here presented, in 
the New York Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review for April, 1856, occupying 
120 pages of that number ; and immediately afterwards the work was published in a 
distinct form. More than a year subsequently there was published in New York a 
work entitled "Davies' Cosmogony, or Mysteries of Creation," without date 
upon the title-page, but bearing a record of 1857 as the date of the Copyright, in 
which an outline of the argument relative to the differences of temperature at which 
the elementary substances, metals, &c, consolidate, and of the argument as to the 
constituent crystals of granitic rocks, appear as original. 



•588 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

are acquainted — no substance which the fall of meteors has land- 
ed upon the Earth — would be at all competent to maintain the 
Sun's combustion. Were the Sun a solid block of coal, and were 
it allowed a sufficient supply of oxygen to enable it to burn at 
the rate necessary to produce the observed emission, it would be 
utterly consumed in five thousand years." 

Now apply these calculations to the nebular hypothesis of the 
formation of the earth and other planets, which supposes that the 
circumference of the Sun cooled down into consolidated rings, 
which then became detached, and rolled up into the several plan- 
ets respectively ; though in most instances, as these orbs contin- 
ued to cool, it is supposed that rings from their exterior were cast 
off to form the satellites. The crystallization of the rocks, with 
their water of crystallization, is necessarily supposed to have be- 
gun while the semi-consolidated rings were still attached to the 
Sun. But apart from that consideration, the inconceivable in- 
tensity of the Sun's heat as estimated by our high authority, in 
the foregoing quotation, will scarcely be considered favorable to 
the cooling process ! 

Either hypothesis, therefore, the Plutonic or nebular, and the 
old Neptunian, particularly the former, is demonstrably absurd 
throughout, even in respect to the smallest fragment of granite. 
And when, again, we consider that this rock and its varieties 
make up the great mass of the globe, and that they are every- 
where essentially the same, Science revolts at the hypothesis, and 
proclaims the attendant facts as an incontrovertible proof of Cre- 
ative Power, and holds them up in confirmation of that literal 
interpretation of the Mosaic Narrative which it is our object to 
establish. Even Theoretical Geology, when soliloquizing upon 
these things, stands aghast at the difficulties before it. Let us, 
however, speak, as always, by the book, and now as hitherto a 
distinguished book, whose Author, at the very moment of as- 
suming that granite rocks were of igneous origin, and contrasting 
them with the known products of volcanoes, says : 

" We are compelled to admit that the conditions under which 
the two kinds of igneous rocks have been formed have not been 
the same." " There appears to have been SOMETHING in the con- 
dition of the ivorld at the earliest times CAUSING certain compounds 
(that is, granitic rocks) to be formed in great abundance which 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OP THE EARTH. 589 

does not now continue in such force as to permit the production of 
similar compounds. What that condition of things may have been 
we do not as yet appear to have any definite ideas." He remarks, 
also, that no granite has ever been known to have been ejected 
from any of the existing two hundred volcanoes. — De la Beche's 
Geology. 

And to the same effect Sir Charles Lyell — " Nothing strictly 
analogous [certainly in no respect analogous] to the primary crys- 
talline rocks can now be seen in the progress of formation on the 
habitable surface of the earth ; nothing at least within the range 
of human observation." — Principles, &c. 

How, then, can Sir Charles affirm, in consideration of his hy- 
pothesis of the igneous formation of granite, that — "In our at- 
tempt to unravel difficult questions we shall adopt a different 
course from the earlier inquirers, restricting ourselves to the known 
or possible operation of existing causes.'''' — Principles, &c. 

The same admission may be found in most geological works of 
authority. One more may be stated. Thus, Prof. Hitchcock, 
in his Geology — "We have no evidence that the most important 
of the older rocks, both stratified and unstratified, are produced 
by any causes now in operation." 

From all which it results that the truly Plutonic or igneous 
rocks, such as are ejected from volcanoes, or occur in the form of 
trap and basalt, offer none of the assumed analogies to the pri- 
mary crystalline rocks, and supply no ground for the geological 
induction as to their formation. 

Let us now recapitulate some of the important points in the 
foregoing demonstration : 1. That the primary rocks, the foun- 
dation-work of the globe, are made up of crystals. 2. That 
the predominant, or granite, is composed of feldspar, mica, and 
quartz. 3. That in syenite hornblende is generally substituted 
for mica, but that in many instances the four crystals appear in 
connection. 4. That the crystals are composed of numerous el- 
ements. 5. That the several crystalline compounds are ar- 
ranged side by side, in systematic order, but in no respect 
united, which proves that they have never been melted, and 
that they must have been compounded and so arranged through 
the instrumentality of Creative Power. 6. That the same struc- 
ture of the rocks shows that the properties impressed upon the 



590 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

materials were rendered instrumental in bringing the rocks into 
their organized condition. 7. That these rocks often embrace 
crystals of topaz, garnets, emeralds, tourmalines, &c. 8. That 
the rocks contain various metallic substances, among which are 
the very volatile arsenic and mercury. 9. That all the crystals 
are impregnated with water. 10. That, in respect to the nebu- 
lar hypothesis, all the constituents, both in their elementary and 
compounded conditions, are condensible at very different tem- 
peratures, all the way from many thousand degrees down to that 
of boiling water, while the rocks declare in every detail that 
they underwent consolidation in all their parts at the same mo- 
ment. 11. That the veins of granite, mica-slate, gneiss, and of 
metals and metallic ores which traverse the primary unstratified 
rocks, also demonstrate not only a simultaneous formation, but a 
sudden condensation of the entire rock, since otherwise the veins 
would have intermingled with the general mass; and nothing 
can be more opposed by the surrounding facts than the hypoth- 
esis of their subsequent interjection in a molten state. 12. That 
the crystalline condition of the rocks, along with the water of 
crystallization, &c, render it certain that they must have been 
originally in a state of aqueous solution, and that at no time 
have they been subjected to the action of a fusible heat. 13. 
That by no possible process, natural or artificial, can the compo- 
nent crystals of the primitive rocks, so different from each other, 
be brought into their existing relations in a small fragment of 
granite. 14. That whether in a state of solution or of fusion, 
the constituent parts would have been indistinguishably blended 
together without the intervention of Creative Power. 15. That 
the tidal action of the moon and sun would have rendered " con- 
fusion more confounded." 16. That the conversion of granitic 
rocks into trap and basalt by a fusible heat disproves the igne- 
ous hypothesis. 17. That the considerations now mentioned 
prove the creation of the elements in chemical union in each of 
the crystals. 18. That all crystals containing water, as observed 
in natural progress, or as produced artificially, are deposited 
from solutions either of water or of which water is a component 
part. 19. That inscrutable conditions exist naturally by which 
mineral compounds become dissolved in water, and in a highly 
concentrated state, as in the case of quartz, but which can not be 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 591 

imitated by art ; all of which coincides with the evidences sup- 
plied by the primary crystalline rocks of their original condi- 
tions. 20. That the sedimentary deposits of limestone, &c, 
were in rapid progress at an early day, on account of the abun- 
dance of these materials which were held in solution after the 
organization of the earth was completed ; and this rapid and ex- 
tensive deposition of those more soluble earths contributes to the 
proof of an original solution of the crystalline rocks, since it 
shows that solvent principles had been suddenly withdrawn 
from the water and incorporated in the crystalline compounds. 
21. That the abundance of created aquatic animals, and the rapid 
multiplication of the testacea and their immobility, explain their 
incarceration in the limestone rocks, according to the progressive 
formation of the latter. 

In regard to the nebular hypothesis, some doubts were en- 
gendered when Lord Eosse's telescope resolved the supposed 
nebulae into systems of worlds. It came in good time to prompt 
the following comment in a distinguished work upon the " Typ- 
ical Forms of Creation" by the Eev. Dr. McCosh and Dr. Dickie, 
but in vain. Thus — 

" It may be asserted, without any risk of contradiction, that no- 
where within the wide knowable space (the heavens) do we dis- 
cover even the semblance of chance, confusion, lawlessness, or 
oversight. Nay, it may be now most emphatically affirmed, 
that nowhere within this extensive region, or in the long ages 
opened up to us by the time which light requires to travel from 
different stars, do we discover any traces of chance now existing, 
or ever having existed, or of ivorlds being formed by natural law, 
or of vjorlds only half formed or even in the course of formation, or 
of any object overlooked, or out of place, or not in harmony 
with all the rest." 

If then our Authors revolt from the formation of worlds out 
of a chaotic state " by natural law," why not at least equally so 
from the application of such a law to the progressive develop- 
ment of animals and plants? Our Authors even sanction the 
hypothetical carbonic - acid atmosphere of the "carboniferous 
epoch," which, they say, "enabled the plants to build up their 
organs and add to their carbonaceous ingredients, while they 
were, at the same time, preparing the way for the advent of ani- 



592 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

mats by subtracting the excess of a gas noxious to animal life"!! 
— thus disregarding, also, the " Eeign of Fishes," which preceded 
the " carboniferous epoch," and the "Eeign of Serpents," which, 
it is said, " were then the Masters of Creation." 

The nebular hypothesis came, for a brief time, almost to a 
pause. We were admonished by another disciple of Theoretical 
Geology that — " The nebular theory, properly so called, which 
seeks to explain the physical conditions of the solar system by 
the laws of mechanics, and the condensation of a vaporous mass 
of ether, requires great caution, that people may not mistake a 
cloud for a goddess ', and accept a series of ingenious sophisms for scien- 
tific demonstration." — London Christian Observer, March, 1856. 

Much was also expected from an attack made upon Laplace's 
nebular hypothesis by Sir John Herschell before the British As- 
sociation for the Advancement of Science, in 1845, who exposed 
its fallacy upon astronomical grounds, but of which I have not 
availed myself. 

In 1849 I congratulated Theoretical Geology upon the advent 
of Kosse's telescope in the following manner : " It has been said 
that 'an undevout astronomer is mad.' But we have looked 
with complacency upon marshalling a chaos of stars into systems 
of worlds, that Science might pluck a laurel from Heaven to 
give it back again to the stupendous law of gravitation ; and we 
have looked with complacency upon the nebular hypothesis. 
Eeason has been neither shocked, nor the astronomer consid- 
ered ' mad :' although a multitude of worlds are seen when we 
mount the stellar heavens upon the analogies supplied by our 
own planet. In this relative sense a series of vast designs 
crowd upon enlightened reason, and he who is true to his reason 
must come to the conclusion, as expressed by Byron, that it is 
with every star as with the earth — 

" ' Such as Creation's dawn beheld thou rollest now.' 

" Such, indeed, is the conclusion to which the astronomer is 
fast finding his way by his own mechanical inventions. Those 
nebulce, so long regarded as a gaseous fire, destined to grow into 
systems like our own (one of which, according to Arago, would 
have occupied all space), are now seen as a "powdering of 
stars," receding in the distance, pile upon pile, as if a cone 



APPENDIX L— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 593 

stretching out beyond the bounds of imagination. But reason, 
the analogies of Nature, Unity of Design in the great plan of 
Creation, have had no part in the astronomer's conversion from 
a chaotic state of the heavens to a symmetry of worlds. The 
telescope alone will have dispelled his illusion ; but it will have 
gained a fact which goes with all former knowledge in proving 
that every fabric of the human mind which is entitled to the ap- 
pellation of a science is founded in consummate Design. The 
astronomer, it is true, still clings to the vestige of his dream, and 
lingers upon the fathomless abyss of light where myriads of stars 
mingle their effulgence to his physical eye ; but he lingers with 
a hope which the very next step he may take in mechanical op- 
tics will prove to have been as faithless as his former visions, 
and will carry him upward and onward through other telescopic 
worlds, but forever bounded by the halo which had been the ig- 
nis fatuus of his philosophy. 

" However beautiful, therefore, the nebular hypothesis of Cre- 
ation, and however reluctant its surrender to the glory of the 
Almighty, it must fall, and with greater precipitation than it 
rose ; for the astronomer himself is demolishing the fabric. 
And with it must pass into oblivion the whole Plutonic scheme 
of the earth's formation, so long an analogical basis of the neb- 
ular theory of the heavens ; or only remembered among those 
eighty other systems in Geology which were grouped under one 
general condemnation by the French Institute (p. 320). 

" The astronomer, however, enjoys a pretext for his factitious 
philosophy far beyond the propagandist of materialism and spon- 
taneous generation. The former may see in matter and its laws 
a Creative Power, and imagine, in opposition to all that is 
known of secondary causes, that He Who ' spake and it was 
done,' Who tells us that ''Thus the heavens and the earth 
were finished, and all the host of them,' did, nevertheless, con- 
sign His chaotic work, with all its ultimate designs as a sym- 
metrical whole, and in its vast and critical relations to life, to the 
operation of the laws impressed upon it. He may ' see gods in 
clouds, and hear them in the wind.' His inquiry may stop 
there ; and, overlooking all final causes, he may confound the 
agencies of matter with Creative Energy. But not so with the 
Physiologist, for the organic being, whether in reason, instinct, 

38 



594 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

organization, functions, properties, laws, is the embodiment of 
Infinite Wisdom." 

It may be expected that something should be said of the pri- 
mary schistose rocks, gneiss, mica -slate, &c. ; although it is not 
important to the subject before us. These rocks are so intimate- 
ly associated with granite, often blended with it in a variety of 
conditions, and some of them, especially gneiss, are so analogous 
to granite in composition, that they must be regarded as nearly 
coeval with it, and as falling under a common rule of interpre- 
tation. Their contemporaneous formation, indeed, has been advo- 
cated by some geologists, as in the able work by Dr. Boase ; and 
others who defend the igneous hypothesis regard the subject as an 
" enigma " that should be wisely avoided. Thus Sir C. Lyell — 

"If we attribute the stratification of gneiss, mica -schist, and 
other associated rocks, to sedimentary deposition from a fluid, 
we encounter this difficulty, that there is often a transition from 
gneiss, a member of the stratified and therefore sedimentary se- 
ries, into granite, which, as I have shown, is of igneous origin. 
Gneiss is composed of the same ingredients as granite, and its 
texture is equally crystalline. It sometimes occurs in thick beds, 
and in these the rock is often quite undistinguishable, in hand 
specimens, from granite ; yet the lines of stratification are still 
evident. These lines, it is conceived, imply deposition from water; 
while the passage into granite would lead us to infer an igneous 
origin. In what manner, then, can these apparently conflicting 
views be reconciled? 5 ' 

Our Author then proceeds to answer his interrogatory by 
availing himself of the licenses and contradictions of Theoretical 
Geology. He supposes a primary solution of gneiss in water, 
but is obliged, by his igneous theory of the formation of granite, 
and the exact similarity in the structure of that rock and of 
gneiss, to have an ultimate recourse to the agency of heat, 
through which, as I have demonstrated, the crystalline structure 
would have been obliterated. Thus, Sir Charles — 

" The Huttonian hypothesis offers, I think, the only satisfac- 
tory solution of this problem. According to that theory the ma- 
terials of gneiss were originally deposited from water in the usual 
form of aqueous strata ; but these strata were subsequently al- 
tered by subterranean heat, so as to assume a new texture." 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 595 

A particular fact, as we have already seen,, is often the founda- 
tion of an important hypothesis in Theoretical Geology, although 
contradicted by other facts. In the case before us, a particular 
fact renders Sir Charles doubtful as to which preceded the other, 
the oldest " secondary rocks" or the molten granite. 

"I have already remarked," he says, "that some granite must 
have existed before the most ancient of our secondary rocks, be- 
cause some of the latter contain rounded pebbles of granite. But 
for the existence of such evidence we might not have felt assured 
that all the granite which we see was not protruded from below 
IN A STATE OF FUSION SUBSEQUENTLY to the origin of the second- 
ary strata" I \ — Principles, &c. Whence would have come the 
requisite heat ! 

And yet Sir Charles on another occasion, and to meet another 
difficulty, controverts, as we have seen, the doctrine of central 
heat (p. 580), as also in the following quotations from his Prin- 
ciples of Geology : 

"If the central heat," he says, "were as intense as is repre- 
sented, there must be a circulation of currents tending to equal- 
ize the temperature of the resulting fluid, and the solid crust it- 
self would be melted. Instead of an original central heat 
we may, perhaps, refer the heat of the interior to chemical changes 
constantly going on in the earth's crust" 

But may it not be asked, what is meant by the " earth's crust" 
if there be no molten interior? And, moreover, how such a 
crust could have been formed according to our Author's real 
doctrine of an original molten state of the globe, while he argues, 
as above, that the supposed existing central heat " would melt 
the solid crust itself?" 

Theoretical Geology leaves the primary stratified rocks not 
only unexplained, but in a condition that imperils its hypothesis 
of the formation of the primitive unstratified rocks; though, 
whatever their cause, it assumes millions of years for their pro- 
duction. But by ascertaining their cause it will be seen that 
they may be brought within a very brief space of time, and im- 
mediately consequent upon the organization of the unstratified 
rocks. 

We have seen that it is demonstrable that the unstratified 
rocks were organized from an aqueous solution through the in- 



596 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

herent properties of matter in connection with a direct act of 
Creative Energy, giving to thern that special determination 
which was indispensable to the organized condition ; and we 
have seen that this conjoint action of Creative Power and second 
causes is what reason infers, in the case before us, as to the econ- 
omy of God's Providence and Unity of Design ; while Creative 
Energy was alone concerned in the production of living beings, 
since the elements of matter were not endowed with the proper- 
ties of life (Chapter YIL). Nor can we hesitate in supposing 
that while the work of Creation was in progress its Author 
would carry out His direct instrumentality, as far as consistent 
with the details of its progress, until the work was completed, 
and pronounced at each step " to be good" and, on a final survey, 
that " God saw every thing that He had made, and behold it was 
very good." 

We have seen, also, that a sudden condensation of the primi- 
tive rocks would be necessarily productive of such an amount of 
vapors and gases internally as to occasion an early eruption of 
the mountain-ranges, and that these mountains in any thing like 
their extent could have had no existence without such a cause, 
thus proving by themselves a sudden condensation of the earth, 
and therefore a direct Act of Creative Energy. This brings us 
to the primary stratified rocks, gneiss, mica-slate, &c, which are 
of vast importance to animated nature, especially to plants; and 
herein is a far greater evidence of Design than that which The- 
oretical Geology professes so much to admire in the superficial 
position of the metals for the uses of man, but from which it ex- 
cludes all Providential aid. Now, although it is very reasonable 
to suppose, in the case of the primary stratified rocks, that the 
Creator went on with His direct instrumentality as far as re- 
quired for their speedy completion, it is unnecessary to infer any 
other agency than that of the causes which grew out of the plan 
of the unstratified rocks, since, from the condition of the strati- 
fied, it is inferable that that plan embraced a reference to such 
natural causes as would be adequate in themselves to effect the 
stratification. That such was the case is rendered apparent not 
only by the condition of the strata, but by those violent causes 
which must have been set in operation by the sudden condensa- 
tion of the unstratified rocks. The lashing and tumbling of the 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EAETH. 597 

waters, and " gathering them into seas," is all that is necessary 
to explain the phenomena, and to relieve Theoretical Geology 
of its perplexities in regard to those ''violent causes which," it 
admits, " were in early operation, but which finally disappeared 
forever." Indeed, if the primitive rocks were solidified accord- 
ing to our demonstration, they must have been superficially dis- 
integrated by the violence of the waters while in that soft con- 
dition which our theory supposes, and the detritus have been 
deposited exactly as we find it. In this particular respect there 
is no difference between us and Theoretical Geology, for it is 
obliged to surmise the existence of unaccountable and universal 
torrents of water, whose causes are among the most embarrass- 
ing of its "enigmas." But that is not all; for there are other 
special "enigmas" attending the stratification — such as a fre- 
quent blending of the stratified and unstratified rocks, or, as Ge- 
ology has it, "passing into each other" — blocks of granite, also, 
imbedded in the strata, and, worse than all, something like un-' 
stratified granite or syenite overlying the stratified. But the 
explanation just rendered of the causes of the stratification, and 
the nearly simultaneous formation of the stratified and unstrati- 
fied rocks, explains the problems as a natural consequence. 
Thus, therefore, the primary stratified rocks come to the proof 
of the sudden condensation of the unstratified rocks. This 
"Gordian knot" may be, therefore, unravelled without resorting 
to Alexander's expedient. And thus, also, we obtain at once 
from the same causes that sedimentary deposit upon the sur- 
face of the rocks, in a pulverulent state, of the component mate- 
rials of the rocks that was necessary to the vegetable kingdom 
(p. 480). 

Nevertheless, it is more than probable that, after such turbu- 
lent action as attended the consolidation of the earth, the up- 
heaval of the great mountain-ranges, and the somewhat later 
sub-alpine chains, and still later minor elevations, there would re- 
main upon various parts of the surface of the globe vast accu- 
mulations of water, to ultimately wend their way to the ocean, 
after everywhere depositing a variety of sedimentary strata 
abounding with the exuviae of testaceous animals, and hurling 
destruction before them as they burst their confines in the oldest 
valleys, to be progressively arrested by others formed by later 



598 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

upheavals that were greatly composed of sedimentary deposits 
and fossil exuviae from the ocean itself, and from which, as will 
be seen, the coal-formations derived their mineral strata. (Ap- 
pendix III.) These minor hills, which studded the earth, were 
elevated by the almost exhausted causes of the mountain-ranges, 
and whose final operation did not happen, most opportunely, 
till the ocean had deposited its plastic limestone, and other ma- 
terials that have yielded their bounties to the vegetable world 
and to the uses of man, both as the hills exist at present and as 
others were demolished and stratified when the barriers gave way 
to the pent-up waters. And to these sources of the superficial 
sedimentary strata must be added those which have come into 
view through recessions of the ocean. 

Who, therefore, shall presume to say that extraordinary causes 
were not comprehended in the Creator's plan of organizing the 
earth that will explain all the undoubted sedimentary strata, as 
well as the primary stratified rocks, without assuming the pres- 
ent operations of nature as a ground of analogy for the geolog- 
ical ages ? Some advocates of the geological periods are dis- 
posed to concede that the agencies which brought about the dif- 
ferent series of strata were of such violence that all were accom- 
plished in a shorter time than generally allowed by Theoretical 
Geology. Bakewell, for example, after indicating the rapidity 
with which chalk is deposited, remarks that — 

" My object in directing the attention of Geologists to this 
subject is, to show that strata may be formed more rapidly than 
they are generally disposed to believe, and that the feeble opera- 
tion of natural causes in our own times, however similar in kind, 
hear no proportion in intensity to the mighty agents that formed the 
ancient crust of the globe.'" — Geology, 

There is also before us a fact which appears to be conclusive 
of the rapidity with which the fossiliferous rocks were deposited, 
and with which they underwent condensation. These rocks are 
found as low down as the primitive formations, and they all em- 
brace the exuviae of animals and plants in a state of good preser- 
vation. Nor is the condition of the fossils limited to particular 
localities, but is universal. It is, therefore, manifest that the be- 
ings of which they are the representatives were quickly im- 
bedded in the mineral substances which contain them; all of 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 599 

which will appear more clearly in our Appendix on the Coal- 
formations. The whole scheme of geological epochs, however, 
professing to rest upon the strata and the fossils, has grown out 
of the doctrine of the slow formation of the earth in virtue alone 
of the properties of matter, while all the attendant facts in either 
case have been overridden by the spirit of hypothesis. Our un- 
questionable facts demonstrate the existence of causes when the 
earth underwent stratification, whether primary or secondary, 
that have had no proper analogies since the stratifications were 
completed, or the stratification would have still gone on; and 
we thus come to understand how the great mass of sedimentary 
rocks may have followed the operation of those causes in less 
than half a century. And as will have been seen, also, there is 
nothing in the aggregate depth of the sedimentary strata, when 
not piled artificially upon each other according to the method of 
Theoretical Geology, and nothing in the imbedded fossils, to 
contradict this conclusion.* The multiplication of testaceous 
animals is so rapid that a very few years would be an ample al- 
lowance of time for the early fossiliferous rocks ; and in respect 
to the calcareous matter the attendant fossils denote, of course, 
that it was deposited with great rapidity. (See Appendix III.) 
Our various facts concur in showing that the calcareous deposits 
were a special circumstance growing out of a redundant solution 
of those substances at the period of the earth's consolidation. 
Limestone and its calcareous fossils also present far greater ev- 
idences of Design in the adaptation of means to the ends than 

* Theoretical Geology distributes the various sedimentary strata into as many eras, 
and then proceeds to pile them upon each other, although some of them may be as 
remotely separated as Europe from America. The aggregate depth is then measured 
in miles, and the time required for the formation of all the strata is thus finally de- 
termined. The following is the modus operandi in geological science : 

"When," says Sir Charles Lyell, "we have established the relative age of 
two formations in any given place, from direct superposition, or by any other evi- 
dence, a far more difficult task remains — to trace the continuity of the same forma- 
tion, or, in other cases, to find means of referring detached groups of rocks to a con- 
temporaneous origin. Such identifications of age are chiefly derivable from two 
sources — mineral character and organic contents ; but the utmost skill and caution 
are required in the application of these tests, for scarcely any general rules can be 
laid down respecting either that do not admit of some important exceptions." — Prin- 
ciples of Geology. (See Chapter XIII., where we have had the foregoing subject 
under consideration.) 



600 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

gold, silver, and iron, which, have been so much admired in this 
respect by Theoretical Geology ; since the former has vast rela- 
tions to the exigencies of plants and animals, while the latter are 
limited alone to the conveniences of man. Precisely the same is 
also true, in respect to organic life, of all the other sedimentary 
strata ; and least of all, therefore, can it be imagined that the 
Creator would have neglected, in His general plan of the earth 
and its inhabitants, the requisite means for the production of 
those great instrumentalities immediately after the organization 
of the earth was completed. And when we consider that the 
structure of the animals and plants whose exuviae occur in the 
earliest fossiliferous rocks forms an indisputable proof that the 
earth was then as well fitted as now to its latest inhabitants, man 
included, how absurd the conclusion that the earth underwent a 
progressive preparation for an ascending series of creations till it 
should be rightly adjusted for the abode of man ; and how greatly 
more inconsistent is it, with all our views of the Creator's designs, 
to suppose that He delivered over the earth to the meaningless 
occupation of animals and plants for a vast period of time — 
from the "reign of insects" to the " reign of mastodons" — when 
it is conceded by all that the object of the earth was to supply 
an abode for the human race, and the only object of animals and 
plants was to subserve the uses of man I (Chapters VII. and 
XIII.) 

Theoretical Geology and ourselves are on common grouud as 
to the early date of the sedimentary strata, but differ widely in 
respect to their causes and the rapidity with which they were 
formed. A principal . cause of this difference, after the greater 
ones of their factitious thickness and their dependence upon 
agents now in operation, is the infrequency of exuviae of the 
higher order of animals in the early strata. To this last objec- 
tion it may be answered that their present scarcity in their na- 
tive state enforces the belief that their aggregate number was 
small. But as great a reason exists in their perishable nature, 
especially under the influence of causes then in operation. And 
as to the contrast which Theoretical Geology makes of this par- 
ticular circumstance with the profusion of testaceous exuviae, it is 
at once disposed of by the marvellously rapid multiplication of 
the inferior aquatic animals ; while in respect to any absence or 



APPENDIX I. —ORGANIZATION OP THE EAETH. 601 

rarity of piscatory remains in the testaceous fossiliferous rocks it 
follows from the nature of these animals, who, like the birds, es- 
cape in their element when danger impends. The latter, indeed, 
" are usually wanting in deposits of all ages, even where fossil 
animals of the highest order occur in abundance." — (Lyell.) It 
should also be understood by the reader uninformed in geology 
that no fossiliferous strata, properly so called, are attributable to 
the general deluge, though that catastrophe probably gave rise, 
more or less, to a stratification of elevated land embracing fossil 
exuvise — certainly in the coal-formations. (See Appendix III.) 

It only remains now to be farther said, in respect to the sedi- 
mentary deposits, that the physical agents which have been in 
operation within the period of historical records shadow forth the 
desolation that might have speedily ensued upon causes which 
evidently bore an incalculable proportion to such as have been 
subsequently manifested, unless the general deluge form an ex- 
ception. It was, however, at a far distant age in the calendar of 
modern times when the present physical agencies had entombed 
cities over an area of hundreds of square miles, as Babylon and 
Nineveh. But although Theoretical Geology allows the exist- 
ence of causes during the earth's stratification, and the "carbon- 
iferous era," which have no parallel now, it forms its inductions 
very greatly from what it has witnessed in its daily course of 
observation ; and hence the avidity with which it has pointed to 
the ravine below Niagara Falls in proof of their existence for at 
least ten thousand years — its great stand-point in the Western 
World. Here the conclusion has been founded upon what is 
observed to be in progress at the present day, and without any 
proper reference to the differences in the condition of the soil 
and rocks at different points of the gorge, and especially to the 
very contracted space at different parts of the ravine, and to the 
soft, friable condition of the sedimentary rock when the inundat- 
ing waters departed from this region of country ; nor to the im- 
portant fact that the bed of the river is more rapidly disintegra- 
ted at distances above the falls than at their verge. Now such 
may have been the conditions in particular parts that a mile of 
the ravine may have formed in a century. A latitude of the 
period, therefore, which has elapsed since the General Deluge 
will appear to be a very ample amount of time to all who may 



602 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

regard the subject in its manifest realities. Hugh Miller 
makes a special point of this rarity, and is satisfied with the ten 
thousand years of Sir Charles Lyell.* He is even willing to 
allow a much shorter period: "Let us admit," he says, in his 
Testimony of the Rocks, " that the trunk through which the St. 
Lawrence now flows has been cut in somewhat less than six thou- 
sand years. But through what, let us ask, has it been cut ? It 
has been cut through aif ancient grave-yard of the upper Silurian 
system, charged with the peculiar fossils," &c. 

Theoretical Geology, therefore, brings the beginning of the St. 
Lawrence and Niagara Falls to near the time of the General Del- 
uge ; and what other catastrophe within the compass of the last six 
thousand years than such a Deluge can have swept away the im- 
mense barriers of the inland sea in which the regions of the great 
lakes were submerged? The indisputable and conceded facts 
form one of the most conclusive monumental vestiges in proof 
of the occurrence of a general desolating flood at a recent date. 
And to the same effect are the vestiges of lakes which occur in 
all parts of the globe, especially in the vicinity of rivers, whose 
barriers were broken down apparently at the same time; and, 
as the denuded beds of the lakes attest, at a time not more 
distant than the sudden disappearance of the great barriers of 
the inland sea which resulted in the formation of the Niagara 
Cataract. 

The opinion of Sir Isaac Newton upon the origin of the 
earth will form an interesting conclusion of our subject. He 
entered into no philosophical analysis of the earth's composition, 
nor had science advanced sufficiently to enable him to penetrate 
the profound labyrinth ; but his far-reaching mind, overleaping 
all secondary agencies, referred the organization of the earth, 
after creating its materials, as well as the complete formation of 
all things else, to continued and unqualified acts of Creative 
Power. Thus, in his Optics — 

"It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed 
matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of 
such size and figures, and with such other properties, and in 

* Sir Charles remarks, in his Principles of Geology, that "If the ratio of reces- 
sion has never exceeded fifty yards in forty years, it must have required nearly ten 
thousand for the excavation of the whole ravine." 



APPENDIX I.— ORGANIZATION OF THE EARTH. 603 

such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which 
He formed them. All material things seem to have been com- 
posed of the hard and solid particles above mentioned, variously 
associated in the first creation by the councils of the Intelligent 
Agent. For it became Him who created them to set them in 
order ; and if He did so, it is unphilosopliical to ask for any other 
origin of this world, or to pretend that it might rise out of chaos 
by the mere laws of nature ; though, being once formed, it may 
continue by these laws." 



APPENDIX II. 

THE FLOOD. 

[The substance of this Appendix appeared in my work on Theoretical Geology, 1856.] 

We are assured by the Kev. Dr. Buckland, in his Reliquice 
Diluviance (1823), that "The discoveries of modern Geology, 
founded on the accurate observation of natural phenomena, prove 
to a demonstration that there has been a universal inundation of 
the Earth," and that " all these facts, whether considered collect- 
ively or separately, present such a conformity of proofs tending to 
establish the universality of a recent inundation of the Earth as 
no difficulties or objections that have hitherto arisen are in any 
way sufficient to overrule." "An agent thus gigantic appears to 
have operated universally on the surface of our planet at the 
period of the Deluge ; the spaces then laid bare by the sweeping 
away of the solid materials that had before filled them, are called 
Valleys of Denudation ; and the effects we see produced by wa- 
ter in the minor cases I have just mentioned, by presenting 
us an example within tangible limits, prepare us to comprehend 
the mighty and stupendous magnitude of those forces by which whole 
strata were swept away, and valleys laid open, and gorges exca- 
vated in the more solid portions of the substance of the earth, 
bearing the same proportion to the overwhelming ocean 'by 
which they were produced that modern ravines on the sides of 
mountains bear to the torrents which, since the retreat of the 
Deluge, have created and continue to enlarge them." — Buck- 
land's Reliquiae, etc. 

And thus the Baron Cuvier — "I am of opinion, with Deluc 
and Dolomieu, that if there be any circumstance thoroughly es- 
tablished in Geology, it is that the crust of our globe has been sub- 
jected to a great and sudden revolution [the Flood], the epoch of 
which can not be dated much farther back than five or six thousand 
years ago" — Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 1818. Of Buckland's 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 605 

Reliquiae he says: "Most carefully described by Prof. Bucklarid, 
under the name of diluvium, and exceedingly different from those 
other beds of rolled materials which are constantly deposited by 
torrents and rivers, and contain only bones of the animals existing 
in the country, and to which Buckland gives the name of alluvi- 
um. They now form, in the eyes of all Geologists, the fullest proof 
to the senses of that immense inundation which came last in the 
catastrophes of the earth." — Discours sur les Revolutions de la 
Surface du Globe, 1826. 

It is also said by Hugh Miller, in his " Testimony of the 
Rocks," in which he rejects the Flood, and laughs at the Ark as 
a " big box," that — 

" The tradition of the Flood may be properly regarded as uni- 
versal, seeing there is scarce any considerable race of men among 
which, in some of its forms, it is not to be found." 

And the following somewhat obsolete Authorities : 

"But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the 
Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the Flood, 
they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, 
until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until 
the Flood came and took them all away ; so shall also the com- 
ing of the Son of man be." — Christ, in St. Matthew 1 s Gospel. 

" By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as 
yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, 
by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the right- 
eousness which is by faith." — St. Paul, in Hebrews. 

"By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in 
prison ; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long- 
suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was 
a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by wa- 
ter." — First Epistle of Peter. 

"And spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth 
person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the Flood upon 
the world of the ungodly." — Second Epistle of Peter. 

As it was a special object, in proving the creation of man as 
described in the Sacred Narrative, to show that he was endowed 
with a "Living Soul " and a Principle of Life (Chapters YII. and 
XIV.), so, also, I shall endeavor to show, as a concurring proof, 
that the Narrative of the Flood must have been equally a direct 



606 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Kevelation, and that it must be received in the same literal sense, 
If this can be established, it disposes summarily of all specula- 
tions about "prehistoric man," and prehistoric animals as well. 
The doctrines of spontaneous generation, of the development of 
species from each other in an ascending series, of successive cre- 
ations and extinctions, the whole typical system, &c, vanish be- 
fore such an act of the Creator, independently of all my other 
facts and demonstrations. The inconsistency of all these as- 
sumptions will be abundantly manifest in the presence of such a 
special act of Providence. I would premise, also, that the usual 
mode of disposing of the Narrative of Creation, among those who 
are unwilling to reject it entirely, is equally applied to that of 
the Flood, as expressed of the latter by Hugh Miller, who says 
that " The true question is, not whether Moses is to be believed 
in the matter, but whether or no we in reality understand Mo- 
ses." ! ! — Testimony of the Rocks. 

My remarks in regard to the obvious meaning of every state- 
ment in the Narrative of Creation are alike applicable to that of 
the Flood. No descriptive language can be more definite and 
intelligible, and, as I have endeavored to show, no sophistry can 
pervert their precise import, nor invalidate the collective state- 
ments of either Narrative as a perfectly consistent whole. This 
proof, however, of their Divine origin is much less cogent in re- 
spect to that of the Flood than of Creation, since the latter em- 
braces a complexity of details and a stupendous philosophy. 

The traditions relative to a universal Flood among all nations 
not only attest such an event, but they so far correspond with 
the Narrative as to render it certain that they had a common ori- 
gin. It is obvious, indeed, that this tradition must have over- 
spread the earth at an early day if the Noachian Flood had ever 
an existence, since Noah survived the event 350 years, and Shem 
500 years — the former having lived to within 100 years of the 
birth of Abraham, and the latter was his contemporary 150 
years. Now, did Noah and all his family conspire in fabricating 
a story of transcendent improbabilities, from which all the tradi- 
tions have proceeded ? Would not the whole condition of the 
earth, its renovated population, its animals, plants, &c, have ren- 
dered such an attempt at imposture ridiculous? "Would not 
such an event, indeed, have appeared quite as improbable to 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 607 

those early and widely scattered heathen nations as to the Chris- 
tian people of our day, had not the information been imparted 
by survivors of the Flood, and even by the demonstrative proof 
which the Ark itself must have continued to supply long after 
its uses were at an end ? And to all this let there be superadded 
the scene of desolation, the rarity of man and animals, and their 
gradual multiplication through the first two or three centuries. 
Eeasoning from ourselves, it is readily seen that such a general 
belief in the Flood must have been long and forcibly impressed 
by the most direct and unequivocal testimony. There have ex- 
isted, indeed, not only the universal traditions, oral and written, 
but others of a monumental nature, down to the present day.* 
Of these an example is supplied by Humboldt among the Mexi- 
cans, who informs us that — 

" Of the different nations who inhabit Mexico, paintings, repre- 
senting the Deluge, are found among the Aztecks, the Miztecks, 
the Zapotecks, the TIascaltecks, and the Mechoachans. The 
Noah, Xisuthrus, or Menon of these nations is called Coxcox, 
Teocipactli, or Tezpi. He saved himself and his wife Xochiquet- 
zal in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft; but ac- 
cording to the Mechoachans, he embarked in a spacious Acalli 
with his wife, his children, several animals, and grain, the preser- 
vation of which was important to mankind. When the Great 
Spirit, Tezcatlipoca, ordered the waters to withdraw, Tezpi sent 
out from his ship a vulture. This bird, which feeds on dead 
flesh, did not return, on account of the great number of carcasses 
with which the earth, recently dried up, was strewed. Tezpi 
sent out other birds, one of which, the humming-bird, alone re- 
turned, holding in its beak a branch covered with leaves. Tezpi, 
seeing that fresh verdure began to clothe the soil, quitted his bark 
near the mountain Colhuacan." — Humboldt's Researches. 

In my work on Theoretical Geology (1856), I endeavored to 
prove the occurrence of the general Flood by the coal-forma- 
tions, the universal distribution of boulders, &c, and that the 
Flood not only explains all the otherwise unaccountable prob- 
lems attending the coal-fields, but that they would all have been 

* Eaber, in his Origin of Pagan Idolatry, has collected a great amount of all va- 
rieties of traditions of the Deluge ; to which Harcoukt, in his large work on the 
Doctrine of the Deluge (1838), has made many and highly interesting additions. 



608 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

a necessary consequence of such a cause. I have there, also, 
shown the numerous absurdities of the hypothesis of slow forma- 
tion, and shall again consider the subject in Appendix III. 

In respect to the boulders and other associate diluvial drift, I 
have also endeavored to show the errors of the "glacial theory," 
which has been invented as a substitute for the general Deluge, 
in explanation of the boulders or erratics and other superficial 
drift, which are manifestly owing to some universal cause in si- 
multaneous operation. Those who entertain this doctrine are 
also advocates either of the nebular origin of the globe, or of its 
present molten interior, which is necessarily fatal to a theory that 
supposes the earth to have been invested with ice when its tem- 
perature was far more exalted than at present. And here we 
may stop for a moment to glance at other aspects of the " glacial 
theory," that Theoretical Geology shall not allege against us any 
suppression of its "facts." It has many speculations upon that 
frigid era, and has sometimes endeavored to evade the conclusion 
as to the universality of the ice by assuming its formation in 
northern regions, and thence " either floating like icebergs," ac- 
cording to Professor Agassiz, " or, as there is still more reason to 
believe, moving along the ground like the glaciers of the present 
day, deposited the numerous detached fragments brought from 
distant localities." — Principles of Zoology. But this will explain 
only the drift that is deposited at the base of mountains, taking 
our Author's parallel example. The boulders and other asso- 
ciate drift may be said to be almost everywhere, and everywhere 
detached from the tops of high mountains. To have effected 
such results there must have been a universal and deep incrusta- 
tion of the earth with ice ; and if Theoretical Geology disavow 
this, it must then abandon its "glacial theory." Or, if Geology 
be interrogated as to the manner in which, according to its alter- 
native, "the icebergs" got out of the ocean upon land, or as to 
the abundance required by the diluvial drift, or how they with- 
stood the geological heat in travelling the whole face of the 
earth, or how glided over its mountainous surface, there proba- 
bly would be some difficulty in rendering intelligible answers. 
But taking that most plausible aspect of the hypothesis which 
supposes that the ice, after having gathered the boulders and 
other material from the dry land, became detached and rolled 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 609 

away upon the expanse of waters, where the boulders and other 
drift were deposited upon the rising bottom of the ocean ; why, 
then, are not the boulders sometimes, at least, incrusted with ma- 
rine shells, and often covered with a sedimentary deposit from 
the ocean ? Why not always reposing upon oceanic formations ; 
while, on the contrary, not only every variety of rock is their 
resting-place, but all over the earth they lie superficially upon 
alluvial soil, or are piled into hills along with other diluvial 
drift? 

But the distinguished advocate of the glacial theory just quoted 
has recently supplied some statements which necessarily suppose 
the entire earth to have been simultaneously invested with a coat- 
ing of ice. In his late exploration of the Amazon he found in 
the drift satisfactory indications that its valley was once filled 
with glaciers, and that they had overspread the elevated regions 
of Brazil. This glacial condition must, therefore, have been con- 
tinuous from the tropics to the arctic regions. But our Author, 
who has the "glacial theory " in his special charge, has still more 
recently affirmed the universality of the earth's incrustation with 
ice. In a published letter (1870) to William Bradford, he says 
that — 

" The photographic illustrations you have brought from your 
late expedition to Greenland have, in my opinion, a high educa- 
tional value." " For me personally they have a special interest, 
as showing graphically the remnant of that great ICE-SHEET once 
spreading over the ivhole United States, now shrunken within the 
limits of the North Pole." 

But the hypothesis, which is so clearly contradicted by the 
existing condition of the earth in respect to temperature, and its 
various zones as they relate to the Sun, is even more so by the 
undisturbed condition of animal and vegetable life. Such an 
universal "ice-sheet" would, of course, have been of sufficient 
duration to have completely extinguished all the land animals, 
at least, and all vegetation ; or, had it been only partial and at all 
commensurate with the boulders and other drift, the attendant 
universal reduction of temperature would have so blighted veg- 
etation as to have been fatal to all land animals ; while, on the 
contrary, there has been no unusual disturbance among the ani- 
mal tribes. Very manifestly the " Glacial Theory " has not been 

39 



G10 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sufficiently mindful of the exigencies of vegetable and animal life 
in having thus excluded atmospheric air, frozen up the surface 
of the earth, cut off all nourishment, &c. ; nor is there any possi- 
bility of evading these conclusions. But such difficulties are no 
obstacle to Theoretical Geology. 

There was a time, prior to the Eev. Dr. Buckland's day, when 
Theoretical Geology had not entirely discarded the General Del- 
uge ; and the Philosopher of Oxford prepared the way for its 
final rejection by pronouncing it, with his own Reliquioe Diluvi- 
ance before him, "a tranquil inundation." That work, however, 
will remain a much nobler monument to the memory of the most 
efficient originator of recent theoretical geology than the Bridge- 
water Treatise on Geology and Mineralogy, in which he abandons 
the former in behalf of the latter. To the Beliquice we may re- 
fer for an ample amount of proof that the boulders and other su- 
perficial drift which overspread the earth were due to a general 
flood, which, in its recession from the north-west, swept over the 
summits of mountains, and dislodged fragments of rocks of thou- 
sands of tons. Our Author's true opinion of the violent and dev- 
astating nature of the Flood has been quoted at the beginning 
of this Appendix ; and the testimony of our own senses assures 
us that his conclusions are not exaggerated. We know it from 
the universality of huge boulders and other drift, often wafted 
over immense distances, and always in one direction, always, or 
nearly so, on the southerly or easterly face of mountains, along 
with a corresponding direction of the so-called "scratches," or 
furrows, produced by collisions with superficial strata of rocks. 
What, also, denotes a recent distribution of the boulders is the 
general fact that they either lie upon the surface of the ground, 
or are piled into hills with other drift. 

It will be impossible, of course, to present the details of this 
copious subject; but I shall recur to it again in the Appendix 
on the coal-formations, which, in themselves, supply an ample 
proof of a general deluge. In my work on Theoretical Geology I 
have presented several examples in illustration of the event, par- 
ticularly as they occur in the State of Vermont, which is one of 
the best places for observation. Here the granite boulders, gen- 
erally of large dimensions, are distributed over the State upon 
the easterly side of the Green Mountains, from the summits of 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 611 

which they have been detached. The surface through a large 
extent of country is immediately underlaid by clay-slate, or 
which often forms the surface, of a very early date, upon which 
the boulders repose, or have been accumulated into hills along 
with gravel, &c. This slate being often denuded, supplies very 
ample opportunities for observing the scratches, which constantly 
run in a south-easterly direction ; and it frequently happens that 
the boulder by which a furrow was made has found its resting- 
place in the immediate vicinity. Two examples may now be 
stated of what is common throughout the State of Vermont on 
the easterly side of the Green Mountains, but not on the west- 
erly; and one of our examples may be readily witnessed by a 
visitor to Montpelier, the capital of the State. This town is situ- 
ated in the valley of Onion Kiver, at a distance of some fifteen 
miles from the mountains. On the southern side of the village, 
in the direction of Berlin, the country rises more than three hun- 
dred feet within the distance of two miles and a half, and the 
side of the hill, which consists of clay-slate, is everywhere 
strewed with granite boulders varying from one to more yards in 
diameter, and scarcely worn at their edges ; which shows that it 
would have been as much of an " up-hill work" for the "glacial 
theory " as Homer's mythological conceit of tugging at the stone. 
These boulders are conspicuous from the road-side, and have 
been transported from a distance of at least a dozen or fifteen 
miles. At two miles and a half from Montpelier, upon the hill 
I have mentioned as rising to an elevation of three hundred feet 
or more, there lay, a few years ago, upon the denuded surface of 
clay-slate, within a few rods of the road, one of those granite 
boulders of immense size, concealed from the observation of the 
passenger by an intervening mound. My attention was attracted 
to it by a pile of granite blocks which had been quarried out for 
building purposes, and placed within view of the road. I found 
the remaining portion of the boulder lying at the foot of a low 
hill down which it had rolled. This hill rose gradually to about 
forty feet, upon the summit of which, the clay-slate had been 
thrown up perpendicularly, so as to form a wall of some four feet 
in height and two to three feet in thickness, and extending along 
a fourth or a third of a mile in an unbroken line, excepting at a 
point in a northerly direction from the boulder, where was a gap 



612 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

down to the base of the mural range corresponding with the di- 
mensions of the boulder ; and in a line continued northerly is a 
bald granite mountain from which the boulder was evidently dis- 
lodged, and which, striking the upright barrier, had cut its way, 
rolled down the declivity, and imbedded itself in the clay-slate to 
the depth of more than a foot, as shown at the portion which 
had been quarried out. 

Another example, and of great interest, on account of its well 
denned character and its easy access, may be seen upon an up- 
land plain less than two miles north of West Eandolph, in the 
same State, about twenty miles south of Montpelier. Here the 
clay-slate is very superficial, and denuded in many places. In 
the midst of this plain stands a bald granite mountain, of conical 
shape, which has been thrown up to the height of some six or 
seven hundred feet, with a diameter at its base of about a third 
of a mile. A vast pile of huge boulders lies at the foot, over 
several rods, upon the south side, but they become gradually 
dispersed upon the plain in the shape of a fan, spreading wider 
and wider, till they are to be seen of the same ponderous dimen- 
sions, expanded over a broad extent of the distant slope which 
rises south-easterly of the village. But this is not the only inter- 
esting part of this locality, for there is not a boulder to be seen 
in any other direction from the mountain. And now, what will 
"the glacial theory" respond to this phenomenon, where boul- 
ders are seen in one direction only, spreading out like a fan, and 
taking the same course as witnessed in all mountainous countries ? 
This is only an example of what is presented by the whole range 
of the Green Mountains ; and its overwhelming testimony of the 
flood and of its resistless force is too obvious for comment. 

Sir Charles Lyell, in speaking of the supposed " glacial pe- 
riod in North America" in his Antiquity of Man (1863), renders 
an account of erratic blocks, or boulders, as witnessed by himself 
"in Berkshire, Massachusetts, and those of the adjoining parts of 
New York, about one hundred and thirty miles inland from the 
Atlantic coast," which corresponds with my own experience over 
large regions of the Northern States : 

"Although smooth and rounded on their tops," he says, "they 
are angular on their lower parts, where their outline has been 
derived from the natural joints of the rocks. Had these blocks 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 613 

been conveyed by glaciers they would have radiated in all directions 
from a centre, whereas not one even of the smaller ones is found 
to the westward [of a particular ridge], though a very slight force 
would have made them roll down to the base of that ridge, 
which is very steep in its western declivity. It is clear, there- 
fore, that the propelling power, whatever it may have been, acted 
exclusively in a south-easterly direction. I observed one of the 
green blocks, twenty -four feet in length, poised upon another 
about nineteen feet in length. The largest of all is about ninety 
feet in diameter, and nearly three hundred feet in circumference. 
We counted at some points between forty and fifty blocks visi- 
ble at once, the smallest of them larger than a camel." 

Such, as it respects the south-easterly direction of the erratics, 
I believe to be true of all the mountainous regions of the North- 
ern Atlantic States — certainly as far as my observations have ex- 
tended over large regions. Although Sir Charles refers rather 
obscurely to the "propelling power" which dislodged and scat- 
tered the boulders, and considers " the hypothesis of the glaciers as 
out of the question" as he says in another place, he nevertheless 
remarks that — "I conceive that the erratics were conveyed to 
the places they now occupy by coast ice, when the country was 
submerged beneath the waters of a sea cooled by icebergs com- 
ing annually from arctic regions." But why, then, were none of 
the very numerous erratics deposited on the westerly side of the 
ridge, especially since the ridge is supposed to have been sub- 
merged? The same objection obviously applies as much to the 
hypothesis of floating ice as to that of the glaciers. Nor can the 
phenomenon be isolated, and interpreted apart from thousands 
of others of the same nature which overspread the Northern 
States. 

A well-defined example of the foregoing nature, and one of 
ready observation, occurs at the trap-formation known as the 
Palisades, which traverse the western shore of the Hudson Eiver 
(see Appendix I.), although an attempt has been made to appro- 
priate even the boulders from this locality to the glacial theory. 
But an attentive observer, not in the interest of Theoretical Geol- 
ogy, will quickly perceive that every attendant circumstance is 
distinctly opposed to the assumption, and equally indicative of a 
desolating flood. It is also here worthy of remark, as bearing 



614 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

upon the " glacial theory," that this region of trap has been 
thrown up through an aqueous deposit of a disintegrated granitic 
rock of ten to twenty feet in thickness. These trap Palisades 
rise to the height of 300 to 500 feet, and generally present a per- 
pendicular face upon the river side. The boulders which have 
been detached from them are often more than a dozen feet in 
length and breadth, and are distributed in great profusion over 
the island of New York, and occupy many miles of the southern 
portion of Long Island as far out as the ocean. The greatest 
abundance, however, is to be seen in a south-easterly direction 
from the gaps in the Palisades. Here the flood has cut its way 
through, and swept all before it; and whoever will pursue a 
south-easterly course from the gaps will meet with demonstra- 
tions that will silence any doubt as to the nature of the catastro- 
phe upon which they depended. Or, if he take a westerly course, 
the absence of similar boulders upon that side will add more 
strongly to his conviction. He will also find an equally conclu- 
sive proof of the absurdity of applying the "glacial theory" to 
this wreck of the Palisades in the frequency with which immense 
boulders have been piled into hills varying from fifty to more 
than a hundred feet in height, along with huge granite boulders 
from very distant localities, and a great variety of rubbish, of 
which graywacke, especially, often bears the exuviae of testaceous 
animals. These remarkable hills, large, and of a conical form, 
were common on the easterly side of New York, and I made them 
many visits while they were undergoing removal. I then saw 
the boulders (as they were doubtless seen by many geologists), 
more than fifty feet above the base of the hills, of variable sizes 
to a dozen feet in all their dimensions, side by side of, above and 
below, granite boulders of equal dimensions, but once separated 
by an immense distance, and graywacke with "medals" in per- 
fect preservation. But as these hills, which supplied so good an 
opportunity for observation, have disappeared, the same thing 
may be seen over all the southerly part of Long Island. Or, 
whoever will cast his eye upon the denuded hills as he passes 
along the river railroad that conducts him from New York to 
Albany, will find them studded with trap boulders, particularly 
in places opposite to the fissures in the Palisades. We need not 
say how all this is demonstrative of the Deluge and of the reck- 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 615 

lessness of the " glacial theory ;" nor how it should impress a con- 
viction of the desolating power with which the waters are graph- 
ically said to have "prevailed exceedingly upon the earth." 

The foregoing considerations, and what remains to be stated 
more extensively of a similar nature when I come to the coal- 
formations (Appendix III.), reveal to us the cause of many other 
analogous phenomena which have contributed to the multitude 
of hypotheses in Theoretical Geology. Among the most impor- 
tant of these are the ravine below the Falls of Niagara, and the 
removal of the barrier at the outlet of Lake Ontario and at other 
places, by which an inland sea was pent up in the northerly sec- 
tion of North America, and which were under consideration in 
Appendix I. We then saw that Theoretical Geology assigns to 
these occurrences a date so recent as to bring them nearly within 
the Scriptural period of the Noachian Flood. No one will deny 
that such a debacle as a general Deluge, more than any one of 
Theoretical Geology, was calculated to sweep away those barriers, 
and otherwise contribute towards the excavation below the Falls 
of Niagara; nor does Theoretical Geology assign any of its deba- 
cles to a period as recent as it grants to the ravine of Niagara 
Falls and the trunk of the St. Lawrence (p. 601). And precisely 
in the same manner do we arrive at an explanation of the vacated 
lakes in all parts of the globe, from which the waters generally 
departed simultaneously with the inland sea of which the St, 
Lawrence formed one of the outlets. 

Corresponding, also, with what I shall say in Appendix III. 
of the testimonials supplied by the coal-fields, is the extensive 
distribution, in high northern latitudes, of the bones of animals 
that inhabited either tropical or temperate climates, of which Sir 
Charles Lyell has the following example, and which may be 
introduced with the remark that it is unaccountable that the 
fact and his speculations upon it, especially in connection with 
the boulders and other diluvial drift, had not suggested to 
him the probabilities, at least, of a general flood. Thus Sir 
Charles — 

" The bones of the great fossil Mammoth are very widely spread 
over Europe and North America, but are nowhere in such profusion 
as in Siberia, particularly near the shore of the frozen ocean. Are 
we, then, to conclude that this animal 'preferred a polar climate? 



616 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

If SO, BY WHAT FOOD WAS IT SUSTAINED, AND WHY DOES IT NOT 

STILL SURVIVE near the ARCTIC circle?" ! ! — Principles of Ge- 
ology. 

And more than that: Sir Charles neglected to speak, in the 
foregoing connection, of the celebrated Elephant and Ehinoceros 
which were found in that same arctic circle, and where no 
"food" exists, in a state of perfect preservation; one being 
frozen in the ice and the other in the sand, ever since they were 
wafted there by the Flood. This contradicts Sir Charles's hy- 
pothesis, to suit the occasion, that there may have been in that 
region, " at no very remote period in the earth's history, a temper- 
ate climate, sufficiently mild to afford food for large herds of Ele- 
phants and Khinoceroses." ! ! The perfect preservation of the 
animals proves that they must have perished where food was 
supplied ; and it shows, also, that when the animak were depos- 
ited there the temperature was the same as at the present day, or 
decomposition would have taken place immediately. It should 
be considered, also, that the bones of the Mastodon are found ly- 
ing superficially in all the climates of the globe — in high south- 
ern latitudes of North America as well as " near the shores of 
the frozen ocean ;" and that in Virginia the stomach of one was 
found undecomposed and filled with species of plants then grow- 
ing around it. By what natural process can be explained the 
sudden extinction of this animal at a time when it existed in im- 
mense numbers, and of other mammalia whose bones are equally 
distributed over vast regions of the earth, and which disappeared 
at the same late geological era? No other answer can be ren- 
dered but that of a universal flood, whether they perished in the 
regions where their exuviae are found, or if transported about from 
some particular zone of the earth. And here it is worthy of re- 
mark that some species of animals, especially the larger, probably 
became extinct before they had multiplied after the Flood, since 
immediately after that event they were equally subject as before 
to destructive agencies. And if we consider that only two of 
each species, with a few exceptions, were preserved in the Ark, 
and how barren must have been the earth, especially the low 
grounds, we come at once to understand why the remains of so 
many extinct species refer themselves to the era of the Deluge. 
The Virginia specimen of an undecomposed stomach of the Mas- 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 617 

todon, in connection with the wide distribution of the bones of 
this animal, is an exemplification of our remark, and supplies a 
critical proof of the Mosaic Narrative. 

Let us here, also, refer again, as a cogent proof of the Flood, to 
the monumental records of the human race. I have said (Chap- 
ter XII.) that we can trace them no farther back than Babylon 
and Nineveh ; and here we find a high advance in the arts of civ- 
ilization. But this denotes a long antecedent civilization, a long 
line of other cities of which there is no other indication than such 
as is supplied by Bevelation. Where are the vestiges? Where 
to be found the traces of man's progress in knowledge prior to 
the Assyrian and Egyptian era, excepting in that which was im- 
parted by Noah and his immediate descendants? By digging 
down we may possibly find them, as we have the coal-fields. 
But the disappearance of all traces of civilized humanity prior to 
the foregoing cities can be interpreted only by a general flood ; 
and it must be taken, therefore, as one of the indubitable proofs 
of such a debacle. The era, also, of those ancient cities corre- 
sponds with the estimated era of the Flood, and thus increases 
the force of the proof. (See Chapter XII.) 

There are many other details of the foregoing nature which 
have either been already considered, or will be reserved for a 
subsequent part of this Appendix and for that on the coal-for- 
mations; and I shall now proceed to consider the capacity of the 
Ark, upon which I might rest, essentially, the proof of the Inspi- 
ration of the Narrative of the Flood, and of its universality. I 
shall show that the capacity of the Ark was even more than suf- 
ficient for all the land animals known at present ; while it would 
be preposterous to suppose that Moses or any one of his day 
would have invented such a structure for the few animals then 
known. As, however, it has become a settled opinion that the 
vessel was not sufficiently capacious to meet the requirements of 
the Narrative, I must necessarily consider the subject in minute 
detail. 

Different estimates have been made of the Jewish cubit in its 
application to the dimensions of the Ark. Dr. Aebuthnot, in 
his elaborate work on Coins, Weights, and Measures, decides it to 
be equal to 21.888 English inches. This is also Dr. Kitto's es- 
timate, and is adopted by Hugh Miller in his Testimony of the 



618 PHYSIOLOGY OP THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

Rocks. It is safe, therefore, to follow Miller's opinion upon this 
question, since he had no disposition to exaggerate the dimen- 
sions of the Ark ; and for a like reason I shall adopt his esti- 
mate as to the number of animals, &c. He introduces the sub- 
ject in his characteristic manner, thus: 

" The form and dimensions of Noah's Ark are sufficiently 
given in the Sacred Eecord. It appears to have been a great 
oblong box, somewhat like a wooden granary, three stories high, 
and furnished with a roof apparently of the ordinary angular 
shape, and a somewhat broader ridge than common ;* and it 
measured three hundred cubits in length, fifty cubits in breadth, 
and thirty cubits in height" — and much more in a similar style, 
both as to the Narrative of the Flood and of Creation, and which 
has had its intended effect upon those to whom it was addressed. 

He then allows for the cubit twenty-one inches and nearly 
nine lines; and "let us agree," he says, " with Dr. Kitto that the 
Ark was 547 feet in length by 91 feet in breadth," and about 
54 feet in height, with three stories. Thus provided, our Author 
goes on to say : 

"Measures so definite were effectual in setting the arithmeti- 
cians at work in all ages of the Church, in order to determine 
whether all the animals in the world by sevens and by pairs, 
with food sufficient to serve them for a twelvemonth, could have 
been accommodated in the given space. It was a sort of stock 
problem, that required, it was thought, no very little attainments 
to solve. Eighty years have not yet passed since kind old Sam- 
uel Johnson, in writing to little Miss Thrale a nice little letter, 
recommending her to be a good girl and to mind her arithme- 
tic, advised her to try the Ark problem." At the time of this 
crushing repartee, he allows that there were "A few lingering 
Theologians, some of them very intelligent men, who continue 
to regard the Ark as quite big enough for all." Notwithstanding, 
however, these discouragements, I shall endeavor to " try the 
problem." 

Miller then adopts the latest estimate of the air-breathing ver- 
tebrates as supplied by " the admirable Physical Atlas of Johnston, 
1856." They then amounted to 8596 Species, exclusive of the 

* The general estimate is that the roof of the Ark was raised in the middle only 
21 inches. 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 619 

cetacea and seals.* Besides these an allowance must be made 
for a certain proportion of land insects, and for land animals that 
may have been discovered since 1856. But for all these we 
shall find an abundance of room. 

Taking next the foregoing dimensions of the Ark, and mul- 
tiplying the length by thrice the breadth (for the three stories), 
we shall have what is equivalent to a single deck of 547 feet in 
length and 273 feet in breadth, or 149,331 square feet — being 
nearly equal to three and a half English acres. Such are the 
usual premises ; although estimates are generally made of the 
solid contents and the amount of tonnage. But the estimates 
for the animals, food, &c, are always limited to the area of the 
three floors, without reference to the actual capacity of the Ark — 
regarding the floors as representing the tonnage. The calcula- 
tion, however, thus predicated of the area of the three floors will 
yield only 149,331 square feet. But it will be found sufficiently 
ample for all the required purposes ; and therefore upon this ba- 
sis my calculation will be first made. The allowance of space to 
the animals is much greater than in our menageries. But it sup- 
poses that the Creator made no excessive provision of room; 
none for promenades, on such an emergency. Nevertheless, for 
the purpose of the most comfortable accommodations, I shall ul- 
timately show that every land-breathing animal known at pres- 
ent was allotted at least twice the space allowed by our first es- 
timate. So far as this I agree with Hugh Miller, that " We in 
reality have not understood Moses." We have looked for too much 
detail in the Narratives both of the Flood and of Creation, 

* The following is Johnston's classification : 

Species. 

Quadrumana 170 

Marsupiala 123 

Edentata 28 

Pachydermata 39 

Terrestrial Carnivora 514 

Rodentia 604 

Ruminantia 180 

Birds 6266 

Reptiles 657 

Turtles 8)_ 

Sea-Snakes 7) 

Total 8596 



G20 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which were intended to be of a general and comprehensive na- 
ture, and obvious inferences left to the common understanding 
of mankind. Moreover, besides the alleged want of capacity in 
the Ark, the Flood is farther discredited by rejecting the indis- 
pensable miracles, and by a supposed deficiency of water, &c. I 
shall therefore show, before dismissing the subject, that all the 
reputed miracles were in the highest degree probable, and that 
there was naturally an abundance of water. 

Proceeding, then, in the first place, with our lowest estimate 
of 149,331 square feet (the area of the three floors), let us adopt 
as a standard measure the space allowed in livery-stables for a 
horse. This is generally 4 feet by 8, or 32 square feet. But let 
us say, instead, 5 feet by 8, or 40 square feet, and endeavor to 
supply every animal, according to its size, with a corresponding 
amount of room. Should it be thought, however, at the close of 
my first estimate that a sufficient allowance has not been made, 
there will be ample room remaining for any supposed deficiency. 

Adopting next Miller's large estimate of 166 species of clean 
beasts that must have been taken into the Ark by sevens, and 
which, multiplied by seven (that is, three couples for breed, and 
one for sacrifice), will amount to 1162 individuals; besides a few 
clean fowl not enumerated, but for which, and for any increase 
of the numbers of clean beasts since 1856, ample space will be 
provided. These 166 species consist of 20 species of Ox, or 140 
individuals ; 27 of Sheep, or 189 individuals ; 20 of Goats, or 140 
individuals ; 51 of Deer, or 357 individuals ; and 48 Antelopes, 
or 336 individuals. Total number of individuals, 1162. To each 
of the 140 oxen we will assign, on an average, a stall of 5 feet by 
8, making a total of 5600 square feet ; to the 189 sheep a pen of 
1280 square feet ; to the 140 goats a pen of 920 square feet ; to 
the 357 deer a pen of 4760 square feet ; and to the 336 antelopes 
a pen of 2240 square feet. The space thus allowed amounts to 
14,800 square feet. 

Let us take next the largest beasts, the Pachydermata, 39, and 
others down to the size of the African Lion, and allow for the 
whole the very improbable number of four hundred species. 
This, multiplied by two, makes 800 more individuals ; and let us 
make an average allowance of 60 square feet for each animal, 
amounting to 48,000 square feet. This, added to the preceding 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 621 

consumption of space, will leave 86,531 of the original 149,331 
square feet, or area of the three floors. 

We have now remaining 8030 species, or 16,060 individuals, 
less than the size of the African lion down to that of the very 
numerous species of the humming-bird, to be provided for. It 
-now becomes more difficult to say how much space should be al- 
lowed for those smaller animals ; of which 12,532 individuals are 
birds, 1208 rodentia, and a large number of small carnivora. 
But allowing 20 square feet to every eight of the remaining 
16,060 individuals, 40,000 square feet will meet the demand. 
There will then remain of the area of the floors 46,531 square 
feet, which exceeds an English acre by nearly 3000 square feet ; 
and there is nothing to occupy this immense space but ISToah's 
family, a year's supply of food, and any number of insects whose 
eggs were not preserved in the mud. The food, however, should 
be deducted from this and packed in the hold of the vessel, ac- 
cording to the opinion of Josephus and Philo ; and there will 
then remain to Noah's family an area of an acre and 3000 square 
feet, admitting a dozen shelves, each of nearly a similar area, or 
equivalent to an area of a dozen acres, for the insects or any oth- 
er conceivable purpose. 

The excess of room has resulted from adopting such a plan of 
accommodation as is devised by man for the disposal of animals 
that are deprived of their liberty, as in stables, menageries, and 
vessels, and not such as was intended by the Creator. A large 
proportion, therefore, of our remaining 46,531 square feet maybe 
added to our estimate of the requisite dimensions of the stalls, 
pens, and cages. As to exercise, an ample amount would have 
been supplied by the motion of the vessel. 

But a word more about the Insects. When I come to the 
demonstration which the coal-formations afford of the occurrence 
of a universal flood, it will appear that this debacle may have 
covered "all the high hills under the whole heaven," and yet 
that the average depth of water was only "fifteen cubits," or 
about twenty-seven feet; and although human reason, with its 
present knowledge, must deduce this as a certain consequence 
from the surrounding facts, it would have appeared absurd to an 
uninspired writer of the time of Moses that a depth of "fifteen 
cubits " of water would have been sufficient to cover all the high 



622 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

hills, and I may therefore appropriate this consideration as an 
exquisite internal proof of the Divine authority of the Narra- 
tive; especially as the statement is regarded by others as want- 
ing in credibility, and not only so, but that the oceans would not 
supply the requisite quantity of water. And now as to the In- 
sects. According to our premises, then, the greatest depth would 
have been upon the least elevated parts, and the most superficial 
upon mountainous regions ; while, as will be seen in Appendix 
III., from the nature of the causes which carried the waters over 
the high hills, other elevations of a few hundred feet, and remote 
from the mountains, were, like the higher mountains, only tran- 
siently and superficially submerged. The Insects, therefore, or 
at least their eggs, which are very tenacious of life, would have 
been very safe in the mud at elevations of a few hundred feet. 
Nor does this construction interfere in the least with the compre- 
hensive statements in the Narrative, since they apply only to an- 
imals that would have completely perished in the catastrophe. 
But this is not said to evade any difficulty about assembling the 
insects, or to exclude them from the Ark, but. only to afford an 
alternative to the incredulous in Divine Power or in the unity 
and consistency of His plans. The probability is that the per- 
petuity of insect life was generally left to eggs imbedded in the 
ground, as that of vegetation was to the seeds of plants. 

The foregoing calculation of the capacity of the Ark has been 
made simply for the purpose of showing that the hitherto esti- 
mated area of three floors would have been sufficient for all the 
purposes of the Ark, and more commodious than the usual pro- 
vision which is made by man in his analogous restraints upon 
animals. But.the Creator was more bountiful than has been sur- 
mised, as I shall now proceed to show. In the first place, the 
number of floors in the Ark has been most mistakenly limited 
to three ; and this is more remarkable, considering that many of 
those who have "tried the problem of the Ark" have estimated 
its solid contents and tonnage as well as the area of its floors. 
The tonnage, indeed, has been sometimes much overrated. It is 
stated, for example, in Kees's Cyclopaedia, and in Brown's Dic- 
tionary of the Bible, and by other authorities, that Dr. Arbuth- 
not makes the capacity of the Ark equal to 81,062 tons, allow- 
ing 21,888 inches to the Jewish cubit; which is an excess of 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 623 

about 12,700 tons. But I can not find any estimate of the ca- 
pacity of the Ark in Arbuthnot's writings. The error appears 
to belong to another quarter. 

According to our standard measure of the Jewish cubit, the 
precise length of the Ark was 547.2 English feet; breadth, 91.2 
feet; height, 54.72 feet. These dimensions yield 2,730,781.9008 
solid feet, and a fraction over 68,269 tons of 40 cubic feet. The 
Ark was, therefore, more than three times the capacity of that 
wonder of the modern world, the Great Eastern, whose tonnage 
is 22,000. It is inexplicable, therefore, why a vessel of such 
marvellous proportions as the Ark should not have suggested 
the certainty that an enormous amount of space would have been 
wasted with three floors only — such a waste as rarely obtains in 
sumptuous private dwelling-houses of three stories. The limita- 
tion of the accommodations of the Ark to three floors, notwith- 
standing their sufficiency, has been the source of all the perplex- 
ities that have annoyed the multitude who have "tried the prob- 
lem." They have looked with wonder at the stupendous dimen- 
sions ; but three fjoors were so out of proportion that a belief ap- 
pears to have obtained universally, especially through the instru- 
mentality of Theoretical Geology, that the Ark was not sufficient- 
ly capacious for its avowed purposes. But its capacity remains 
good for 68,269 tons. 

Although we read of only three stories, there was no limita- 
tion as to the number of floors ; but there was the summary in- 
struction — " Rooms shalt thou make in the Ark." The details 
were left to Noah's skill and common sense, and he was allowed 
more than a hundred years for the completion of the vessel ; and 
as this great length of time corresponds with the specified dimen- 
sions, and with the fulfillment of other requirements, it must be 
taken as corroborating proof of the accuracy of all the statements, 
and as one of the numerous internal proofs of the Inspiration of 
the Narrative. All the instructions as to the building of the Ark 
are comprehended in about sixty words, and they convey all the 
information that is necessary for a clear understanding of the ca- 
pacity and conveniences of the vessel. Any unnecessary expla- 
nation in the Narrative would have been incompatible with a 
Divine Revelation. Doubtless, however, other instructions than 
those recorded were given to Noah. But enough has been re- 



624 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

vealed for our ample information. This absence, I say, of all un- 
necessary details in compact Narratives which embrace a com- 
plete general outline of events that clearly suggest the details in- 
volved, is one of the many internal proofs of the Inspiration of 
the Narratives of the Flood and of Creation. It is abundantly 
obvious that a limitation to three floors in a building of fifty- 
four feet in height, leaving a greatly excessive space between the 
floors, was never intended by the Projector of the Ark. There 
were but a very few animals that required an elevation of even 
twelve feet, and a vast proportion not more than from one to 
four feet. But if we simply double the hitherto estimated num- 
ber of floors, there will be a luxurious provision of room for all 
the animals, for Noah's family, and for the requisite food. The 
capacity of the Ark, as we have seen, was more than three times 
that of the Great Eastern. It was equal to thirty-four frigates of 
2000 tons each, capable of carrying 40,000 men, 3000 pieces of 
cannon, and stores and provisions for six months' consumption. 
Now, all the animals saved in the Ark amounted to only about 
18,000 individuals, down to the size of humming-birds and mice ; 
which, when deducted from the 40,000 men who could have been 
as well accommodated in the Ark, along with 3000 cannon and 
six months' piovisions, we have remaining sufficient room for 
22,000 more, if we estimate every animal of all the 18,000 in- 
dividuals, humming-birds, mice, and all, at the average size of a 
man. What says skepticism to these figures? 

Such, then, was the capacity of the Ark, whatever may have 
been the number of floors — a vessel of 68,269 tons. The meas- 
ures are precise, the objects clearly and circumstantially defined, 
and they enforce the certainty that the writer intended to be 
" understood " as expressing, throughout the Narrative, not only 
a universal flood but a universal preservation of land animals. 
That, however, was not the conception of an uninspired writer. 
None but an Omniscient Being could have known any thing of 
the necessary dimensions of the vessel. All others would have 
adapted its size to the supposed number of animals to be pre- 
served; and for this purpose u an oblong box" of a thousand 
tons would have been regarded as more than adequate. 

Since, therefore, an uninspired writer could have known noth- 
ing of the requirements of the case, it is absurd to imagine that 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 625 

he would have been guilty of the stupid folly of either providing 
such a vessel (probably more than three hundred times greater 
than had ever floated in the days of Moses), or of destroying his 
own credibility by apparently so gross and unmeaning a false- 
hood, and least of all one so consistent, and able, and devout as 
the writer of the Narrative. The number of land animals known 
at present is probably sixty times greater than known to Moses ; 
and, were the Narrative written with our present knowledge, a 
corresponding exaggeration would present us with a vessel of 
more than four millions of tons. And while, therefore, any thing 
like the admitted "definite measures" of the Ark are allowed to 
remain unquestioned, they will form a standard of interpretation 
for the whole Narrative which no "modern science" can invali- 
date, and which will defy the most ingenious sophistry. Indeed, 
it is impossible to overrate the importance of this internal proof 
not only of the Flood but of its universality. And, although the 
occurrence of a general flood is demonstrated by the coal-forma- 
tions, and also by the boulders and other associated drift, and by 
a great amount of internal proof in the Narrative, as I have en- 
deavored to show, we might confidently leave the truthfulness of 
all the statements to the internal evidence supplied by the dimen- 
sions of the Ark. And however much this Narrative has shared 
the obloquy of the Narrative of Creation, this one overpowering 
internal proof will rise up with a coming generation in no flatter- 
ing contrast with the present, either as it respects the wonderful 
fact, or the refusal to recognize the catastrophe as an act of the 
Divine Being. In the presence of such a structure as the Ark, 
with all its objects specifically assigned, we may even look with 
astonishment upon the conclusions of those enlightened men 
who, through a long period of time, have been disposed to com- 
promise the Narrative by conceding a local flood in a limited 
part of Asia. 

And now a word as to the window, which was, doubtless, one 
of some special device ; and therefore nothing more is revealed 
in regard to an ample provision for what is so obviously neces- 
sary as light. And so as to the exigencies for air, ventilation, 
&c, about which nothing is said. A suppression of all such de- 
tails goes to the proof of the Inspiration of the Narrative ; since, 
if it were a device of man, no such opportunities to impeach its 

40 



626 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

credibility would have been afforded ; while, on the contrary, it 
is precisely characteristic of the ways of the Creator in relation to 
man. There is even much more of detail about the structure of 
the Ark than about the organization of the Earth, while in the 
latter connection we are simply told that He made the Sun and 
Moon, and the Stars also, and without any explanation of the de- 
lay of their introduction to our notice until the fourth Day of 
Creation. (See Chapter XI V., and Appendix I.) 

I shall now undertake to show how it may be settled that the 
Flood was, in all its greatest details, of a miraculous nature ; as 
this is strenuously opposed by Theoretical Geology, and by all 
forms of the "New Philosophy," as the grand expedient for 
ejecting the Narrative from the Bible. A representative Au- 
thority, the Kev. Dr. Hitchcock, supplies the following summary 
statement upon the question : 

" It is well known," he says, " that from the earliest times writ- 
ers have indulged in speculations on the natural causes of this 
event (the Flood) ; while to many such an inquiry seems almost 
sacrilegious ; since they suppose the Deluge to have been strictly 
miraculous. Had the Sacred Writer distinctly informed us that 
such was the fact, all philosophical reasoning concerning that 
event would have been presumptuous and useless. But since 
the Bible is silent upon this point, and since we know it to be a 
general principle of God's government not to superadd to natural 
agencies a miraculous energy where the former is sufficient to accom- 
plish His purposes, we are surely at liberty to inquire whether 
any forces exist in nature sufficient, by their unaided operation, 
to produce such a catastrophe." Nevertheless, he thinks that 
"a perusal of the Scriptural Narrative of the Flood is apt to 
leave the impression on the mind that it was miraculous, and that, 
if so, we should not surmise the agency of second causes.'''' It is 
also his opinion that, if there was such a catastrophe as the Flood, 
the preservation was limited to "man and the necessary domestic 
animals," and that "a new creation of animals and plants may 
have taken place subsequent to the Deluge ;" notwithstanding a 
general preservation in the Ark would have saved the necessity 
of " superadding to natural agencies a miraculous energy ;" but 
perhaps, also, because the Ark had a capacity of only a little 
more than 68,000 tons. — Am. Bib. Recorder, Jan., 1838. 



APPENDIX II. —THE FLOOD. 627 

Whoever rejects the miraculous nature of the Flood, so far as 
denoted by its' manifest exigencies, must at once abandon all faith 
in the Sacred Narrative ; for it is evident that the event could 
not have occurred without Divine interposition, however much 
natural causes may have contributed their effects. The whole 
import of the Narrative denotes the superintending care of the 
Creator, and some of the statements convey that assurance. It is 
said, for example, that " The Lord shut him in ;" that " God re- 
membered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle that 
were with him in the Ark " — the obvious meaning of which is 
that the Ark and its inmates were special objects of Divine care 
and protection. The miraculous agency is also declared in the 
most direct manner in the statements — "Behold, I, even I, do 

BRING A FLOOD OF WATERS UPON THE EARTH," &C. — "And the 

Lord said, I will destroy man," &c. — " Behold, I will de- 
stroy them with the earth." — " For yet seven days, and I will 
cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights ; 
and every living substance that I have made will I destroy 
from off the face of the earth." — " The fountains of the deep and 
the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven 
was restrained." — "And God made a wind to pass over the 
earth, and the waters assuaged." — "I will establish My covenant, 
&c, neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." 
According, also, to Biblical critics the Hebrew word for Flood 
" is limited in its application to the General Deluge, not being 
employed in reference to any other kind of inundation." 

To settle this question still farther, let us assume what is un- 
necessary, but perfectly proper to surmise, that the Creator was 
directly instrumental in multiplying the food provided by Noah. 
The objection to such a miracle must vanish before all others 
that were more or less involved in the Flood; and should it be 
allowed to obtain, upon principle, in this instance, it would dis- 
sipate all objections to other more obvious miracles. Moreover, 
this being shown to be consistent with other undisputed, mirac- 
ulous, and analogous acts on analogous occasions, the greater ex- 
igencies of the Flood will fall under the same interpretation. It 
is a construction, also, to which all are entitled who may have 
any doubt arising from the exigencies of the occasion ; and it 
may be definitively settled by an appeal to analogies, some of 



628 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which, like the supernatural pestilence, hailstones, &c, display 
an imitation of the results of natural laws. Analogous to the 
case before us is that of Elijah, who was fed by ravens ; and at 
another time he was miraculously supplied with food by an an- 
gel, and "went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty 
nights unto Horeb, the Mount of God." And there was Jonah 
for three days and nights in the " fish's belly," without food or 
air — not a whale's belly, according to objectors, with "a throat 
too small" but by "a great fish prepared by the Lord to swallow 
up Jonah," and therefore with a throat sufficiently ample. Nor 
may the manna and quails with which the Israelites were fed be 
neglected. But these may not be regarded as proper analogies. 
Consider., then, how "Elijah, and the widow and her house," 
"did eat many days" of "a handful of meal in a barrel, and a 
little oil in a cruse ;" " and the meal wasted not, neither did the 
cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord which He 
spake by Elijah." Also, Elisha's multiplication of the widow's 
oil ; Elisha's provision of food for one hundred men ; and again 
when he prophesied of plenty, on which occasion the servant of 
the king was trodden to death because he would not believe the 
prophecy. 

This brings us, also, to the exact parallel with the case of the 
Ark supplied by our Lord's miracles when He fed the multi- 
tudes, and His reproach of His disciples for not appreciating 
them. Also, the conversion of water into wine, as a luxury. 
But the preservation of man and animals, at the crisis of the 
Flood, " to keep seed alive upon the FACE OF ALL THE earth," 
was only second in importance, in the Designs of Providence, to 
their original creation ; and we may therefore safely conclude 
that any emergency in respect to food was abundantly satisfied 
according to the numerous parallel instances which illustrate the 
subject. But if all the ancient miracles be rejected as "Myths," 
we shall still possess in the miraculous increase of the " loaves 
and fishes " all that is necessary to maintain inviolate the perfect 
consistency of such a miracle in behalf of the helpless occupants 
of the Ark ; although it was not considered important to reveal 
the fact. And it can not be too forcibly stated that there is no 
miracle, except the Eesurrection of Christ, which is distinguished 
by designs in any degree comparable with those which attended 






APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 629 

the preservation in the Ark, and by so much the more, there- 
fore, should the Narrative of the Flood be entitled to our con- 
fidence. , 

The possibility of miracle in respect to food, as also that of a 
miraculous dispersion of the animals, however unnecessary either 
may have been, harmonizes with the miraculous assembling of 
the animals, as shown by the necessities of the event, and as de- 
clared by the statements that — "Two of every sort SHALL come 
unto thee" — that "They went in unto Noah into the Ark" — 
four times repeated, and in the same words ; and that M God re- 
membered Noah and every living thing, and all the cattle that 
was with him in the Ark" — "God spake unto Noah, saying, go 
forth of the Ark," &c. And here I may remind those critics 
upon the ways of Providence who insist that if the Flood was at 
all miraculous it should have been altogether so, that the instru- 
mentality of man was generally enlisted in accomplishing mira- 
cles that related to him. Besides the " very inadequate size of 
the Ark " which is generally alleged, Miller, like many others, 
raises the objection that there would have been " an enormous 
expense of miracle" in assembling and distributing the animals — 
somewhat less, however, than in their creation either before or 
after the Flood. It exceeds the comprehension of the Kev. Dr. 
J. Pye Smith, who, in speaking of the assembling of the ani- 
mals from all quarters, remarks that — " We can not represent to 
ourselves the idea without bringing up the thought of miracles 
more stupendous than any that are recorded in Scripture, even 
what may appear appalling in comparison. The Kesurrection 
of the Lord Jesus sinks down before it." ! ! — Geology. 

But the Eesurrection of our Lord was no greater miracle, in- 
dependently of its objects, than the inception of His humanity, 
or the resurrection of Lazarus, &c. The question turns wholly 
upon what Eevelation says, not upon any comparisons with other 
miracles. Who shall calculate the dynamics of a miracle ? The 
apostrophe, I say, of our Eeverend Author is a mere fiction. And 
yet these same Philosophers can see nothing miraculous or im- 
probable in their supposed creations and extinctions of animals 
at various epochs in their geological eternity. But there should 
certainly be no difficulty with those who believe in Creation as 
taught in the Mosaic Narrative, in not only admitting the com- 



i 



630 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

parativelj insignificant events of the Flood, but in realizing in 
the preservation of man and animals "to keep seed alive upon 
all the face of the earth," instead of a new creation, a sublime 
display of consistency and Unity of Design. 

Our Keverend Author last quoted should have said to an unbe- 
lieving world that the oft-reiterated declaration that the animals 
came unto Noah, two of every sort, and went in unto him into the 
Ark, in connection with the surrounding circumstances, is one 
of the strongest proofs, of an internal nature, of the perfect accu- 
racy of the statement — (carrying with it, I say, its own conclu- 
sive proof) — that ever made its demand upon human reason. 
Nay more : so circumstantial is this part of the Narrative, it 
would seem as if the Inspired Writer was anticipating the in- 
credulity of mankind in relation to the Flood, as in the case of 
his definition of the word Day. (See Chap. XIY.) It is not said 
in the usual brevity of Scripture language — they went into the 
Ark; but in the first place we read that "Two of every sort 
shall come unto thee;" and that "There went m Jwo and 
two unto Noah into the Ark" — that "They went in unto 
Noah into the Ark two and two of all flesh " — "And they that 
WENT IN, WENT IN male and female of all flesh. 11 

But after all, in this miraculous assembling of the animals, 
there is scarcely a perceptible difference from that instinctive 
faculty which guides the carrier-pigeon to its home from distant 
regions, or a bee to its hive, or which admonishes the feathered 
tribes of coming winter, and directs their flight to warmer cli- 
mates; while, also, there is a marvellous analogy in the two 
cases. A slight modification of this law of Instinct would have 
impelled the animals to look out for safety where it could only 
be found — the finding of the Ark by the animals being scarcely 
more difficult than that of the hive by the bee. But however 
this may be interpreted, there can be no evasion of the fact that 
the influences which directed the animals to the Ark were limit- 
ed to a very few, and that with these impelling motives must 
have been associated a Providential care in other respects. The 
affirmations are very direct, and correspond with the exigencies 
of the occasion. And equally so is it with all the other state- 
ments that I shall have considered in the Narratives of the Flood 
and of Creation. In the instance before us, had the writer been 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 631 

silent upon the matter, and especially had he said that Koah as- 
sembled the animals, our Eeverend Author, and all other doubt- 
ers, would be quite justified in discrediting the statement. And 
yet that would have been the natural language of an impostor ; 
especially in a Narrative of such extreme brevity. And it may 
be here said, as of the Narrative of Creation, that had the writer 
betrayed an attempt to expound what is supernatural in his ac- 
count of the Flood, he would have stamped it as a mere romance 
of man. And yet who will doubt that an uninspired writer 
capable 'of constructing this remarkable Narrative would have 
anticipated the objections that have been alleged, and have 
therefore made some explanation of the manner in which the 
animals were induced to " come unto Noah into the Ark," and 
particularly, also, their limitation in most instances to two of 
each species, and those two of the opposite sexes ; the harmony 
that prevailed among them ; something about an adequate sup- 
ply of food, especially the varieties ; how the interior of the Ark 
was arranged, and other analogous details; how the fountains of 
the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven open- 
ed ; why fifteen cubits of water should have been enough (as will 
be seen when we reach the coal-formations) to have covered all 
the high hills, while it is palpable, also, that an uninspired writer 
would have stated the general depth in miles instead of cubits — 
well knowing what an outcry would arise against his apparently 
contradictory statement. He would also have supplied some in- 
formation as to the dispersion of the animals ; and a variety of 
other details as to the events of a year among the assembled rep- 
resentatives of all the creatures of the dry land, which an impos- 
tor would have invented not only for the credibility of his story, 
but to render it a captivating romance. But with all this inter- 
nal proof of a direct Kevelation should be taken also the corre- 
sponding evidence embraced in the Narrative of Creation. (See 
Chapter XIV.) The concurrent testimony of both narratives in 
their internal proof, especially the brevity, exactness, and consis- 
tency of their statements, addresses itself with such force to hu- 
man reason as would seem to be irresistible. And so it is, in- 
deed, with all else in the Scriptures where abstract miracles are 
the subjects of communication. There is no explanation. Faith 
is so peremptorily challenged that it forms, in itself, a system of 



632 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

internal proof of the Inspiration of the Bible; and when the 
statements are considered analytically, each one manifests a 
strong relation to the collective force of the whole. 

It is a primary object with all the opponents of Kevelation to 
expunge the miracles. This is their first position on approach- 
ing the Noachian Flood ; assuming, after the manner of Hugh 
Miller, that it could not have happened without the interposi- 
tion of Divine Power, and therefore it never happened. "And 
be it remembered," says Hugh Miller, "that the expedient of 
having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to get over a 
difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of the 
nature of argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it." 
That, however, does not in the least preclude argumentative 
proof of the occurrence of miracles. I profess, for example, to 
have argued, beyond contradiction, the occurrence of the events 
of Creation exactly as related by the exigencies of facts (Chapter 
YIL), and by the internal proof supplied by the Narrative 
(Chapter XIV.); and to have equally demonstrated the occur- 
rence of the Flood, and its miraculous nature, by the Narrative 
itself, by the dimensions of the Ark, by the coal-formations, by 
the boulders, and other diluvial drift, &c. 

Objections like the foregoing affect the credibility of all mira- 
cles, while that which relates to their magnitude, so often made, 
would at once obliterate the Narrative of Creation. But there is 
no difference in miracles with the Supreme Being. They all 
involve the exercise of Creative Power. The speaking of the 
Universe into existence "in the beginning" — stocking it with 
animals, &c, was no more to Him than the management of the 
Flood, or the creation of a grain of sand. Given the grain of 
sand, there is no difficulty with the rest. And so, also, if 
He was instrumental in directing or conveying a single animal 
to the Ark, the whole difficulty vanishes ; for it is much more 
probable that His interposition would have extended to all the 
exigencies of the case than to have been limited to a part. Mir- 
acles, if at all doubtful, should be estimated according to their 
probabilities or surrounding circumstances, not by their magni- 
tude. What shall be said of the dynamics of the miracle, and on 
no very important occasion, of which Isaiah speaks as "The Lord's 
work, His strange work, His Act, His strange Act?" That the 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 633 

earth ceased its diurnal revolution when the sun and the moon 
stood still for about a whole day at the command of Joshua (and 
in language as correct as that of rising and setting of the sun), is 
just as probable, and as possible, as the miracle of the piece of 
money found by Peter in the mouth of a fish.* The one was as 
"light a thing in the sight of the Lord" as the other. They are 
all equally upon a par in principle ; and if the objections to the 
Flood continue to prevail on account of its miraculous nature, 
every other reputed miracle must be regarded as an imposture. 
All the nations of the earth will have been mistaken in their 
belief of such a catastrophe — all Christendom, until the advent 
of Theoretical Geology, and equally also our Lord himself, will 
have been grossly deceived by the most marvellous and stupen- 
dous imposture ever practised successfully upon mankind. 

Every event of the Flood that could not have been delegated 
to the instrumentality of man, or have devolved upon the estab- 
lished laws of Nature, must be ascribed in undoubting faith to 
God's Providence, or the Narrative must be abandoned as an 
imposture perpetrated upon an unenlightened world without 
any conceivable motive, by a writer of extraordinary mental 
capacity and acquirements, of apparently the most devout con- 
victions, conscious of the great improbabilities that would be 
urged by the unbeliever, knowing well the critical acumen with 
which the man of faith, as well as the scoffer of Providence, 
would penetrate to the very "roots" of every Hebrew word, yet 
the writer abstaining from all explanations that might have 
fully protected the credibility of his story. 

Nevertheless, it was as much a part of the economy of God's 
Providence to employ the laws and agencies of nature in all the 
events of the Flood that admitted of such instrumentalities as 
He manifestly did in organizing the earth. (See Appendix I.) 
But in all such cases there was a direct exercise of Creative En- 

* The miracle relative to the sun and moon, and that of the shadow on the dial 
of Ahaz, have been ascribed by some to "a peculiar refraction of the sun's rays." 
But this would have been as much a miracle as a cessation of the earth's revolution 
in one case, and its reverse revolution in the other. This, however, will not explain 
the apparent cessation of the moon's motion ; and, moreover, had it been said that 
the sun alone stood still, the statement would have been obviously a fabrication ; 
while, on the other hand, the moon being included, in those days of astronomical ig- 
norance, forms a demonstrative proof of the truthfulness of the record. 



684 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ergy in giving a special determination to the operation of estab- 
lished laws. So far, therefore, many events of the Flood were 
of a miraculous nature, since they could not have happened 
without a special intervention of Divine Power quite as direct 
and specific as God's instructions to Noah when he was rendered 
instrumental, and more or less independently so, according to his 
ability to carry out the duties enjoined upon him. In the con- 
struction of the Ark, for example, he required no Divine co-op- 
eration, while the assembling of the animals involved an imme- 
diate interposition of Divine Power. There was probably no 
event of the Flood in which the laws and agencies of Nature 
were not rendered instrumental ; which so far distinguished all 
such phenomena from the strictly miraculous. Could it be 
shown that the Flood was attended by events not in harmony 
with the laws and conditions of Nature, the events to that extent 
must be referred to an exclusive act of the Creator. This is 
strictly miracle, and is equivalent to the original acts of Creation, 
though distinguished from those as constituting no part of the 
system of Nature, but merely forming isolated events. But as 
God is the Author of Nature, He may, of course, give a special 
determination to its forces and laws for the production of events 
which shall harmonize perfectly with such as are their natural 
results; as doubtless occurs in the present order of nature, when 
miracles have been suspended. Hence the difficulty of appre- 
ciating the Divine interposition on occasions which are not ex- 
traordinary, or distinguished by some special proof, as in the or- 
ganization of the primary rocks. (See Appendix I.) Here was a 
direct co-operation of Creative Energy with the properties which 
had been impressed upon matter, and therefore an imitation of 
natural laws as it respects the formation of the crystals. But 
the Deity may act in direct opposition to the laws of nature in 
bringing about special events, and yet there will be no suspen- 
sion of those laws excepting in their relation to the particular 
events; as in the case of the sun and moon "standing still." 
The philosophy of such phenomena rarely engages our atten- 
tion ; and j ust so it is when the Deity interposes His power to 
bring about some particular event in the ordinary affairs of man- 
kind. But there is an acknowledgment of this direct exercise 
of Divine Power in every prayer that is made. There is, how- 



APPENDIX H.— THE FLOOD. 635 

ever, no other manifestation of Divine agency than what may be 
inferred from subsequent events that appear to occur in a natu- 
ral manner. The organization of the earth is a somewhat par- 
allel case, which, until the present showing, has been supposed 
to have been exclusively the work of natural causes. But 
should animals or plants become apparently the products of a 
"creative law," that, as I have shown, would contradict all law, 
and be exclusively the direct work of Creative Energy. (Chap- 
ters VII. and VIII.) The multiplication of food in the Ark 
would have been also, of course, an act of exclusively Creative 
Power. 

But my suggestion relative to a miraculous increase of food 
does not rest in the least, as has been fully shown, upon any 
possible want of space in the Ark, but upon the rejection of all 
miracles, as well, also, upon the assumptions that the capacity of 
the Ark was inadequate, and that it was impossible to have 
supplied the carnivorous tribes with food of an animal nature. 
Miller, in his usual manner, remarks of the latter, that "It 
seems to have been generally taken for granted that the flesh- 
eating animals entirely changed the nature indicated by their 
form of teeth, their stomachs and bowels, and fed exclusively on 
vegetable substances." We suppose no such absurdity. There 
may be readily found what will be amply sufficient for this pur- 
pose without a resort to such a miracle. Our estimated number 
of carnivorous beasts is 514, or, in pairs, about 1030 individuals, 
varying in size from the lion to the weasel. To these must be 
added the carnivorous birds and insects. Of the species of ani- 
mals that went in by sevens there were 166, of which 20 were 
of the ox tribe, and others down to the size of goats and ante- 
lopes. Of these every seventh, or 166 individuals, were intended 
for sacrifice, and when thus offered they would afterwards have 
furnished an average of half a carcass daily of fresh meat. This, 
however, was greatly insufficient; but we need not surmise a 
miraculous increase even of this food, for we can readily look to 
Noah's skill in preserving any quantity of meat against putre- 
faction ; and he probably understood the art of drying, and smok- 
ing, and salting, as well as our own generation. Moreover, Noah 
had the warning of more than one hundred years for all such 
purposes. 



636 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

As to the objection founded upon the dispersion of the animals 
after the Flood, it may be reasonably supposed that the event was 
or was not the result of Divine interposition. The probability is 
that the various parts of the globe were so connected as to have 
admitted of a natural process. It may have been, therefore, a 
simple matter of Instinct as it respects the regions adapted to the 
peculiarities of the animals, since the point of departure for mi- 
gration was in a temperate region. It is more probable, how- 
ever, and in every respect as consistent, to suppose that the ani- 
mals went abroad much after the manner in which they " came 
unto Noah." 

And here it may be well to disarm the unbeliever of his objec- 
tion that the Ark could not have rested upon the top of Mount 
Ararat, as it is in the region of perpetual frost, and is also too 
steep for the descent of the animals.* It is not, however, so 
stated, but that " The Ark rested upon the Mountains of Ara- 
rat-" and therefore it may have been upon a slope not a dozen 
feet from their base, or more probably upon the upland valley 
which unites the two mountains by an interval of about seven 
miles ; and certainly no better place could have been chosen ; or, 
if it be preferred, could have happened. Had it been said that 
the Ark rested upon the Alpine Mountains, Theoretical Geol- 
ogy would scarcely assume that the summit of Mont Blanc was 
the place indicated; nor will it surmise that the historian intend- 
ed to imply that it rested upon the tops of the two mountains of 
Ararat. And to save the objectors any farther trouble over this 

* Among the greatest objectors to the Narrative of the Flood is, as we have seen, 
the Rev. Dr. J. Pye Smith, who goes on to contribute his clerical influence in the 
following manner : 

" Mount Ararat," he says, "is nearly the height of our European Mont Blanc, and 
perpetual snow covers about five thousand feet from its summit. If the waters rose, 
at its liquid temperature, so as to overflow that summit, the snows and icy masses 
would be melted ; and, on the retiring of the flood, the exposed mountain would pre- 
sent its pinnacles and ridges, dreadful precipices of naked rock, adown which the four 
men and four women, and with hardly any exception the quadrupeds, would have 
found it utterly impossible to descend. To provide against this difficulty, to prevent 
them being dashed to pieces — must we again suppose a miracle ? Must we conceive 
of the human beings and the animals as transported through the air to the more level 
regions below ; or that, by a miracle equally grand, they were enabled to glide unhurt 
down the wet and slippery faces of rock ?" — Scripture and Geology. 

Our Reverend Author could not even surmise the possibility that the Ararat of the 
moderns is a very different mountain from that which is so called in the Narrative. 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 637 

subject, we may assure them that the dove would have instinct- 
ively preferred its quarters in the Ark to the cold regions of 
Ararat (if the mountains be truly known) ; while, also, in respect 
to the olive, if the plant now known as such does not grow in 
that region, it is highly probable, as in the case of numerous 
plants far more recently described by Hippocrates and Theo- 
phrastus, that the name of olive was applied to a very different 
plant from our own. (See Appendix III.) 

Even that beautiful and sublime emblematic pledge of peace 
to the earth has not been allowed by the commentators upon 
"evening" and "morning" the obvious import which the nature 
of the Covenant suggests. That the bow had obeyed the estab- 
lished law of nature from the time the " first mist went up to wa- 
ter the whole face of the ground," it would be absurd to deny ; 
and the expressions — " I do set my bow in the cloud," " and the 
bow shall be in the cloud," as a token of promise, evidently mean 
that now for the first time it is to be regarded in that acceptation, 
and that the order of nature shall remain forever after as ordained 
at the day of Creation. And is there not something of Divinity 
in the significance of the sign itself from its associations with an 
element of the Flood ; and, while it thus reminds us of that ca- 
tastrophe, it is a sure pledge of beneficent purposes in the clouds 
which it adorns. A familiar and impressive object, and one, too, 
which could be witnessed in all places of the earth, and as unit- 
ing the past with the future, was clearly most becoming the wis- 
dom and beneficence of the Creator. Instead, therefore, of rais- 
ing the objection, which is often made, that the Narrative violates 
the laws of nature by affirming (what it does not) that the boiv 
was a special creation in commemoration of the Flood, it should 
be regarded in its assigned relations to that event as utterly be- 
yond the conceptions of human ingenuity. The phraseology was 
best adapted to the conventional usages of mankind ; and they 
who insist upon its conflict with nature are the very ones who 
bend the Mosaic Eecord of Creation to any hypothesis that any 
new disclosure in Geology may suggest. Again, we have seen 
that the heathen nations must have obtained their knowledge of 
a general Deluge either from Noah and his descendants or from 
the revelation to Moses, which suggests, in the present connec- 
tion, a circumstantial proof of the authenticity of the Narrative 



638 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

in the remarkable coincidence supplied by Homer when he pre- 
sents the rainbow as a perpetual token of hope, and how, both ac- 
cording to him and Hesiod, the gods swear by the rainbow, as 
personified by Iris. 

Some writers, in recent and former times, who reject the uni- 
versality of the Flood on account of its involving "the miracu- 
lous Power of God," admit, as we have seen, a partial deluge and 
preservation of useful animals, and a new Creation so far as nec- 
essary.* Thus, the Eev. Dr. Hitchcock remarks (in American 
Biblical Repository, January, 1838), that — 

" Some, we know, will cut the knot at once by imputing the 
whole to the miraculous Power of God," &c. "Nor do we see 
any need of miraculous agency in the case, and therefore ought 
not to admit of it without strong proof." And yet he says in 
the same article that "A perusal of the Scriptural Narrative of 
the Flood is apt to leave the impression on the mind that it was 
miraculous?' 1 He also imputes " infidel cunning " to Sir Charles 
Lyell for his simple admission that the Deluge might have been 
universal. At the same time, our Author "cuts the knot" and 
"vindicates the Scriptures" after the following manner. Thus 
he says : 

"In the first place, the Deluge may not have been universal. 
If this be admitted, the animals that existed in remote countries 
may not have perished." "In the second place, a new creation 
of animals and plants may have taken place subsequent to the 
Deluge. We admit that the Scriptures are silent on the subject, 
and therefore they leave us free to reason concerning it from phil- 
osophical considerations." ! ! " The numerous examples of new 
creations which Palaeontology furnishes show us that such is the 

* A few years ago the Rev. Dr. Hitchcock concluded an inquiry into the opinions 
of Geologists upon this subject with the following summary classification : 

" The first class deny that any universal or even general deluge has occurred on 
our globe, and suppose that the deluge of Noah was local like that of Deucalion, Ogy- 
ges, and others. 

"The second class admit a general Deluge, but suppose it took place before the 
creation of man, and make the Mosaic Deluge a local event. 

"The third class suppose that the traces of several extensive, if not universal, del- 
uges are to be found on the globe, and that the last of these events may have been 
identical with that of Noah." — American Biblical Repository, January, 1837. 

At the present day I am not aware that any Geologists recognize the Deluge as 
described in Genesis. 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 639 

law of the Divine Administration." (See Chapters VII. and 
VIII.) And yet our Author, within six pages of the last quota- 
tion, gives us the following example of the consistency of his 
"philosophical considerations." In conceding a limited preser- 
vation in the Ark, he thinks that this was probably for the pur- 
pose of " furnishing the post-diluvians at once, without a miracle, 
with the necessary domestic animals" — notwithstanding his 
opinion that a new creation of animals and plants took place 
after the Flood, if such a debacle be admitted. 

Whatever contradictions of the Narratives of Creation and the 
Flood Palaeontology may deduce from the exuviae of extinct an- 
imals, there can be no doubt that, had our Keverend Author 
taken the same liberty with any human production as with the 
Narrative in the foregoing quotation (as has been done also 
by others), he would have been condemned universally, even 
though it falsified the writer only in unimportant matters. But 
in the statement before us the falsification is made to affect the 
most vital part of the Narrative ; since it is distinctly affirmed 
that there was no post-diluvian creation in the numerous state- 
ments relative to the very objects of the Ark, which were to super- 
sede the necessity of a new creation, and thus maintain an 
Unity of Design, and a consistency with the Creation at " the 
beginning." 

The opponents of Eevelation see no objection to " a new cre- 
ation of animals and plants," if it can be established that the 
Flood was simply a local torrent of water, and thus bring it 
down to a geological debacle ; while, in the mean time, they re- 
volt at an interposition of Divine Power in the events of a Del- 
uge which that Power decreed for unexampled purposes, and 
which could not be fully accomplished without such interposi- 
tion. It is of the nature of a compromise with the man of faith. 
But what proportion does a miraculous institution of a general 
Flood, or a tributary aid in the assembling and dispersion of the 
animals, &c, bear to "a new creation?" Which would require 
the greater proportional exercise of Creative Power, the Provi- 
dential influence upon existing nature without disturbing its 
laws, or a repetition of the original creation of animals and 
plants out of the dust of the earth ? But all this becomes the 
more discreditable to human reason when it is considered that 



640 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

this "new creation" means spontaneous generation. (Chapters 
YII. and VIII.) 

The hypothesis of a local flood and a " new creation" has been 
invented to explode the Mosaic Narrative. It is incomparably 
more improbable than the theory of a universal Flood and its 
miraculous superintendence ; while the doctrine is a clear im- 
peachment of the Record that the Ark was designed "to keep 
seed alive upon all the face of the earth." But the admission of 
even a partial Flood, and a partial preservation of animals, de- 
mands as much " the miraculous Power of God " as the univer- 
sal — since such a flood must have been equally instituted by 
that Power, and the waters miraculously maintained in their sup- 
posed isolated and accumulated condition, and the Ark demand- 
ing the same Providential care as in the case of a general Flood. 
Kay more : the hypothesis imputes inconsistency to the Creator 
by its partial act of preservation when it assumes that it was His 
purpose to recreate all other land animals. And how will it con- 
sistently explain the neglect of the Narrative of announcing the 
" new creation " subsequently to the Flood, when the original cre- 
ation " in the beginning " is so circumstantially revealed ? Why, 
I say, is there no allusion to a post-diluvian creation ; especially 
after all the portentous account of the destruction of mankind 
and of all those animal tribes which held so conspicuous a place 
in the Narrative of Creation, and more especially in considera- 
tion of the repeated declaration which is made of a universal 
preservation in the Ark, and which otherwise would be a pal- 
pable contradiction without a conceivable motive ? 

Wherever in the Holy Scriptures the Flood is the subject of 
remark, whether by the Prophets, or our Lord, or his Disciples, 
it is in a universal sense; and its universality, destructiveness, 
and general miraculous nature, are very forcibly declared by the 
"covenant, that neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the wa- 
ters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the 
earths And in testimony of this the rainbow was appointed, 
that all nations might be reminded of the occurrence on turning 
their eyes to the clouds — a phenomenon which probably attended 
the first "mist that went up from the earth and watered the 
whole face of the ground " — but now, for the first time, and with 
wonderful appropriateness, from its dependence upon water, and 



APPENDIX" II.— THE FLOOD. 641 

as the only universal phenomenon, designated as an emblem of 
Divine mercy. 

While one class of commentators upon the Narrative have 
been troubled about an adequate supply of water that should 
cover all the high hills, another class have cut the knot by sup- 
posing a creation for the occasion, and with this immense redun- 
dancy upon their hands they have had a greater trouble in get- 
ting rid of it. This, indeed, has been an old difficulty. Thus, 
Professor Woodward, in his u Account of the Universal Deluge" 
(1690), remarks that— 

" Men of capacity, in all ages, have been at a loss to seek what 
was become of the water, or where it would all find a reservatory 
capable of containing it. The greatest part of them were forced 
at last to mince the matter, and make only a partial one of it — re- 
stricting it to one single country, Asia, or some lesser portion of 
land." 

And still, it is asked, without surmising a miraculous increase 
of the waters, " How could they have evaporated in the short 
time allotted to the Flood by the Eecord?" The inquiry, like 
all others that are raised as objections, may be shown by the Booh 
to be without foundation. The waters subsided after the same 
manner in which they had invaded the earth when "all the 
fountains of the great deep were broken up J 1 There was no evap- 
oration in the case, any more than there was the imputed neces- 
sity of their extinction. But the Narrative shall answer for it- 
self — "And the waters returned from off the earth continually.'''' 
They "returned' 1 '' into caverns which were ultimately and pro- 
gressively formed as a consequence of those upheavals by which 
the "great deep had been broken up." The language here is 
wonderfully precise and harmonious, and will admit of no per- 
version. It corresponds, also, exactly with what the coal-forma- 
tions testify of the progressive rise of the waters, and with what 
the boulders proclaim of the corresponding and more violent re- 
cession of the waters. As to the expression, " Grod made a wind 
to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged," it bears the 
same relation to the " returning of the waters " as the " forty 
days' rain" does to the "breaking up of the fountains of the 
deep." 

And how admirably does the Narrative present the great fact 

41 



642 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

in a single sentence, although apparently in opposition to other 
statements, and which has been alleged in proof of the shallow- 
ness of the Kecord. It declares, in the face of universal criticism, 
that "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the 
mountains were covered." It remains to be seen how an av- 
erage depth of less than thirty feet of water would have inun- 
dated "all the high hills and mountains;" and as it is scarcely 
probable that the statement was founded upon a calculation that 
has been neglected by all others, it follows that it could have pro- 
ceeded only from Divine Eevelation. (See Appendix III.) It 
may be also said, that while the breaking up of the great deep 
doubtless involved a direct interposition of Creative Power, all 
the subsequent physical results of the Flood may be readily re- 
solved through natural agencies — the rain, the submersion of 
mountains, the coal-formations, the boulders, &c, as will be 
shown in Appendix III. We ask only for some extraordinary 
aid in the sudden upheaval, for a contemplated purpose, of the 
bottom of the ocean, which, in view of the importance of the oc- 
casion, will be conceded to be quite as probable as the division 
of the Eed Sea and of the Eiver Jordan for the accommodation 
of the Israelites. But we would not surmise such an interposi- 
tion, had we any confidence in the geological submersions and 
upheavals to expound the calcareous strata of the coal-fields. 
Nevertheless, it should be said that there was another object be- 
sides that of facilitating the journey of the Chosen People in af- 
fording them an easy passage across the sea and the river ; and 
as the same object was also contemplated by the Flood, and in 
view of the great disparity in the events, and therefore the great- 
er probability of Divine interposition in deluging the earth, we 
will have before us the reasons assigned by Joshua for the mira- 
cles at the Eed Sea and Jordan. Thus Joshua — "For the Lord 
your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until 
ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Eed Sea 
which He dried up from before us, until we were gone over; that 
all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is 
mighty, that ye might fear the Lord your God forever" 

The expressions "The windows of heaven were opened," 
and " The rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights," 
appear to denote a Divine agency in that phenomenon ; but 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 613 

the immense evaporation attending the influx of the waters upon 
the whole face of the earth, and their turbulent movement, was 
probably alone sufficient ; while the greater violence of the reces- 
sion of the waters would have produced such a commotion of the 
atmosphere as to occasion " a wind to pass over the earth." Each 
phenomenon is alike expressive of the vastness of their respect- 
ive causes. 

From what has been already said, and in anticipation of our 
remaining proof of a general Deluge embraced in Appendix III., 
it becomes important to show a correspondence in the details of 
the Sacred Narrative with all these collateral evidences, and thus 
place the Divine Record upon its own intrinsic merits. But, in 
the first place, it should be said that some distinguished and Rev- 
erend Objectors, appreciating the directness of the Narrative, have 
endeavored to circumvent its meaning, as in the case of the Narra- 
tive of Creation (Chapter XIV.), by a forced parallelism with ex- 
pressions in Scripture which are as clearly intended in an indefi- 
nite sense as the language of the Narrative is precise and definite. 
Thus the Rev. J. Pye Smith, in his Scripture and Geology — 

"The expressions of universality in regard to the Flood are 
these : ( The waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and 
all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were cov- 
ered.' " 

That is all. And thus our Author would leave his reader 
with the impression that there is nothing more in the Record of 
the Flood that expresses the universality of that debacle, when, 
in reality, almost every line, certainly every statement, embraces 
precisely, and the whole collectively, in varied phraseology, the 
same comprehensiveness. The passage thus isolated is then 
brought into apposition with isolated passages from other parts 
of the Bible, by which our Author would reduce the whole Nar- 
rative of the Flood, in all its precise and varied expressions of 
universality, to a parallel with what is as obviously figurative, or 
plainly intended in a limited acceptation. But our Author shall 
present his own illustrations, as showing that " universal terms 
are often used to signify only a very large amount in number or 
quantity. Thus — 'And the famine was upon all the face of the 
earth ; and all the earth came to Egypt to buy from Joseph, for 
the famine was extreme in all the earth ;' yet it is self-evident that 



644 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

only those countries are meant which lay within a practicable 
distance from Egypt. — 'All the cattle died;' yet the connection 
shows that this referred to some only. ' The hail smote every 
herb of the field,' &c. — 'All the people brake off the golden ear- 
rings, and brought them unto Aaron ;' meaning, undoubtedly, a 
large number of persons. 'And all the earth sought the pres- 
ence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom'" — besides other analogous 
examples by which our Eeverend Author would interpret the 
phraseology of the Almighty as rendered in the Narrative of the 
Flood! 

Hugh Miller assumes, in his Testimony of the Rocks, that "It 
may be fairly concluded that if there be a show of reason against 
the theory of a flood purely local, it has not yet been exhibited. 11 
Of course, therefore, there is no "show of reason" in the Narra- 
tive itself. Oar Author, also, after the usual manner, presents 
what he would have us regard as parallel examples, from other 
parts of the Bible, for the purpose of showing that the language 
of the Narrative is an exaggeration of the facts which it professes 
to reveal. Thus he says — 

" There is a numerous class of passages both in the Old and 
New Testament, in which, by a sort of metonymy common in 
the East, a considerable part is often spoken of as the whole, 
though in reality often greatly less than a moiety of the whole. 
Of this class are the passages in which it is said, that on the day 
of Pentecost there were Jews assembled at Jerusalem 'out of 
every nation under heaven;' 'that the Gospel was preached to 
every creature under heaven ; 7 ' that God put the dread and fear 
of the children of Israel upon the nations that were ' under the 
whole heaven ;' that ' all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to 
buy corn.' " 

Another writer of distinguished consideration, the Rev. Pres- 
ident Hitchcock (in American Bibl. Repos., Jan., 1838), begins 
a similar interpretation of the Narrative with a conciliatory tone, 
which we have seen to be remarkably characteristic of Theo- 
retical Geology when about to bring its support to Eevelation, 
thus — 

"As to the extent of the Noachian Deluge, the language of 
Scripture seems at first view to be very decided. 'And the wa- 
ters prevailed,' &c. Alike universal are the terms employed re- 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 645 

peatedly to denote the destruction of animals upon the earth, &c. 
In spite of these strong expressions, not a few able writers have 
understood them as simply universal terms with a limited mean- 
ing." Our learned Author then proceeds to select certain exam- 
ples from other parts of the Bible where universal terms are 
plainly meant in a limited sense, such as, •" 'All countries came 
into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn, because that the famine was 
sore in all the lands.' 'And all the earth sought to Solomon to 
hear his wisdom.' Even in the description of the Flood there 
is ONE of these universal terms employed whose meaning we are 
obliged to limit. It was commanded to Noah — 'Of every living 
thing of all flesh, pairs of every sort shalt thou bring into the 
Ark to keep alive.' Here we must limit the term all flesh to 
such as needed a shelter from the cataclysm." 

The reader can require no assistance in placing the right in- 
terpretation upon the foregoing quotation ; and I shall therefore 
only say of it, that our Author is unhappily mistaken in affirm- 
ing that " we are obliged " to limit the meaning of the Inspired 
Writer in that "one" universal term, since the "Writer had re- 
peatedly limited it himself, but to which our Author suppresses 
all allusion! He finally makes the deliberate statement that 
"We have endeavored to show that there is nothing in the 
Scripture account of the Deluge that requires us to consider it 
universal, except so far as man dwelt on the globe" \\ — notwith- 
standing the same language is applied to all land animals as to 
man. 

Our representative Author is ultimately led to a palpable 
though very natural contradiction of himself, and in the same 
article just quoted ; and the more remarkable in consideration 
of the rebuke of Sir Charles Lyell, as appears in the subjoined 
note. It is also a memorable example of the conciliatory man- 
ner which has involved so many in the snares of Theoretical 
Geology, and which is of the same nature precisely as the lan- 
guage rebuked. The reader will, therefore, naturally inquire 
with himself whether the rebuke should not recoil with greater 
force upon him who administered it ; and it may also become a 
question as to how extensively it may apply in Theoretical Ge- 
ology. But read the note. The intended quotation from our 
Keverend Author is as follows : 



646 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"If I mistake not, then, the deluges of Scripture and of Geol- 
ogy may or may not have been universal, in consistency with the 
language of the Sacred History, and with the facts of Science as 
they are at present understood. They agree, therefore, in having 
been very extensive, if not universal. And in view of such 
proofs of their identity it should require decisive evidence to the 
contrary to disjoin them."* 

* When the article appeared from which the foregoing quotations are made, the 
" glacial theory "had not fully crushed out the Narrative of the Flood, and our rep- 
resentative Author introduces Sir Charles Lyell as speculating upon the univer- 
sality of the cataclysm ; at which time, also, Sir Charles appears not to have made 
up his mind whether the Narrative or Theoretical Geology should prevail. In this 
instability of his faith Sir Charles is quoted by President Hitchcock as saying that — 

"For my own part, I have always considered the Flood, when the universality in the 
strictest sense is insisted upon, as a supernatural event, far beyond the reach of philo- 
sophical inquiry, whether as to the causes employed to produce it, or the effect most 
likely to result from it." He is also quoted as saying that "There are no terms 
employed in the Narrative that indicate the impetuous rushing of the waters either 
as they rose or when they retired." 

Now there is nothing in the foregoing extract but what had been the usual concil- 
iatory manner of Theoretical Geology. It must be admitted, however, that the mo- 
tive is rather more open to criticism than would be most conducive to the success of 
abolishing the Mosaic Narrative. It did not, therefore, meet the approbation of the 
Reverend Doctor, that the Chief of his own School should have made even such a 
concession in favor of the possibility that ' ' a supernatural event had occurred which 
was far beyond the reach of philosophical inquiry;" although it will have been seen 
above that our Reverend Author has expressed himself in precisely the same equiv- 
ocal manner. Here is the commentary upon the foregoing quotation : 

"What does Mr. Lyell mean by the phrase which we have italicized? Certainly 
not that he believes Noah's Flood was universal. What can he mean but that he 
should use such an argument with a man who was a strenuous advocate for the 
universality of the Deluge ; while with one who supposed it partial he would consider 
it within ' the reach of philosophical inquiry as to the causes employed to produce it, 
and the effects most likely to result from it.' We know nothing of Mr. Lyell's relig- 
ious creed. [! J But there is something in such an ambiguous mode of treating Scrip- 
tural subjects that reminds us of Infidel Cunning and Duplicity. We should not 
notice this language, however, had not the same thing struck us in other parts of Mr. 
Lyell's Principles of Geology. Thus, in giving the history of geological opinions in 
the nineteenth centuiy, he says, ' It had been the consistent belief of the Christian 
world down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet is not 
more remote than a few thousand years,'' &c. Does he mean that this belief was con- 
sistent with the Bible ? Then he would array the Scriptures against Geol- 
ogy."! ! That is our Reverend Author's trouble. — American Bibl. Repository, Jan- 
uary, 1837. 

The foregoing quotation is not intended as an example of personal feeling, but of 
that arbitrary disposition which tolerates no opposition, and which would gather all 
Christendom into the fold of Theoretical Geology. 



APPENDIX II.— THE FLOOD. 647 

It would have been desirable to have argued the question of a 
general Deluge upon geological facts alone, especially such as are 
supplied in boundless extent by the coal-formations, by the di- 
luvial drift, by the fossil bones, and by Unity of Design, &c. ; 
and. from these considerations to have deduced, upon scientific 
grounds, the necessity of an universal preservation of individuals 
of all species of land animals by some special Divine Interposi- 
tion. But Theoretical Geology has found it expedient to inval- 
idate Eevelation by such violent perversions of its language that 
it has forced upon believers in the Narrative the necessity of a 
critical comparison of its statements with the geological substitu- 
tions. For this reason I shall now proceed to place the state- 
ments of the Mosaic Eecord in what will be equivalent to paral- 
lel columns with the foregoing quotations by which the former 
are misrepresented, and that it may clearly appear that the In- 
spired Writer intended, in a variety of ways, to enforce the idea 
that universality was the leading principle in this miraculous 
event. I shall place each branch of the Narrative hj itself, that 
it may be distinctly seen that universality is the unmodified char- 
acteristic of each, that each interprets and confirms the meaning 
of the others, and that they form one harmonious whole in cir- 
cumstantial as well as general phraseology and in manifest intent. 

1. UNIVERSALITY OF THE FLOOD. 

"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the 
earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from 
under heaven ; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." 

" For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the 
earth forty days and forty nights ; and every living substance 
that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." 

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life were all the fount- 
ains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven 
were opened. 

"And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." 

"And the flood was forty days upon the earth ; and the waters 
increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the 
earth. 

"And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon 
the earth ; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 



648 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

" And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; and 
all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 

"Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the 
mountains were covered." 

"And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty 
days." 

2. UNIVERSAL DESTRUCTION. 

"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created 
from the face of the earth ; both man, and beast, and the creep- 
ing thing, and the fowls of the air; for it rejpenteth me that I have 
made them. 1 '' 

"And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before 
me ; for the earth is filled with violence through them ; and, be- 
hold, I will destroy them with the earth." 

"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, 
and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that 
creepeth upon the earth, and every man : 

"All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in 
the dry land, died. 

"And every living substance which was upon the face of the 
ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the 
fowl of the heaven ; and they were destroyed from the earth : 
and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the 
ark? 

3. UNIVERSAL PRESERVATION. 

"But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt 
come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy 
sons' wives with thee. 

"And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt 
thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee ; they 
shall be male and female. 

" Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of 
every creeping thing of the earth after his kind ; two of every 
sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. 

"And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou 
shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and 
for them." 

" Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the 
male and his female ; 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 649 

"Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; 
to keep seed alive upon all the face of the earth." 

"And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' 
wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. 

" Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of 
fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, there 
went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the 
female, as God had commanded Noah." 

" In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, 
and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three 
wives of his sons with them, into the ark ; 

" They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after 
their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of 
every sort. 

"And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of 
all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. 

"And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, 
as God had commanded him : and the Lord shut him in." 

4. AN AMPLE PROVISION EOR AN UNIVERSAL PRESERVATION. 

" Make thee an ark of gopher wood ; rooms shalt thou make 
in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. 

"And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The 
length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of 
it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits." 

5. ALL THE PRESENT LAND ANIMALS DESCENDED EROM THOSE 
PRESERVED IN THE ARK. NO POST-DILUVIAN CREATION. 

" To keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth." 

"Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, 
of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth ; that they may breed abun- 
dantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth. 

"And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his 
sons' wives with him : 

" Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and 
whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went 
forth out of the ark." 



i 



650 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



6. THE PROMISEC ONFIRMS UNIVERSALITY, 

"And I, behold I, establish my covenant with you, and with 
your seed after you ; 

"And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, 
of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you ; from all 
that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. 

"And I will establish my covenant with you ; neither shall 
all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood ; neither 
shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth." 

"And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and 
you and every living creature of all flesh ; and the waters shall 
no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." 

In one series of the foregoing quotations it is variously said 
that the Flood was universal, and that all flesh shall be destroyed 
from the dry land ; while in the case of the Promise it is affirmed 
that all flesh was destroyed that had not been declared to be ex- 
cepted. And here, also, the dimensions of the Ark come in 
with a corresponding testimony. It is also a remarkable fact 
that the original word here used for Flood (^"no, mahbul) is re- 
stricted to the Noachian Deluge, and is not applied to any other 
inundation ; thus showing that it was an unique event. 

The logic, however, which Theoretical Geology, through many 
of its most able expositors, has founded upon the several series 
of the foregoing quotations is simply this, that "inasmuch as 
the statements — All the earth sought Solomon, to hear his wis- 
dom,' All nations came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn,' &c, 
are evidently intended in a limited sense, therefore we are at 
perfect liberty to limit the meaning, in a corresponding manner, 
of all the apparently precise and positive statements in the Nar- 
rative of the Flood." But the examples by which it is attempted 
to frustrate the individual and collective statements of the Nar- 
rative in their obvious meaning of universality are abstract ex- 
pressions, each relative to an event in itself significant of a lim- 
ited extent, and in simple conformity, as Hugh Miller expresses 
it, with " a sort of metonymy common in the East " (page 644) ; 
while the affirmations of the Narrative were made by God, mul- 
titudinous in number, relative to various specifications, each ex- 



APPENDIX II.— THE PLOOD. . 651 

pressing the exact meaning of the others, and every one declar- 
ing universality. When God himself speaks, it is not in doubt- 
ful language. Take the rule of interpretation as insisted upon 
by Theoretical Geology, both as to the Narrative of the Flood 
and of Creation, and how shall we dispose of passages like the fol- 
lowing : "And all the Nations of the earth shall be blessed in Him " 
— " Look to Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth " — 
" That My Name might be declared throughout all the earth " — 
"For all the earth is Mine" — "Made heaven and earth, and sea, 
and all that in them is " — " I have sworn by Myself, that to Me 
every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear"! These are only 
examples of a multitude of similar ones, while those of the " me- 
tonymy-sort" are rare, and their connection with the context, 
which is the only true rule of interpretation, shows us at once 
that they were intended in a limited sense. Where, then, would 
the logic of Theoretical Geology conduct us ? where this appeal 
from the Creator to "a sort of metonomy common in the East?" 

But, in reality, those who explain away the language of Rev- 
elation in the foregoing manner have no belief even in a local 
Noachian Flood. It is simply a ruse to reconcile the reader to 
a complete rejection of the Narrative. Miller's Testimony of 
the Rocks abounds with expedients of this nature, enforced by de- 
risive satire. 

As to those Geologists who admit, or affect to admit, a local 
Noachian Flood, they could not have been aware of what the fa- 
cetious Burnet said about their philosophy in his once famous 
Theory of the Earth, nearly two hundred years ago. Let us, there- 
fore, hear him : 

" Some modern Authors," he says, " observing what straits 
they have been put to in all ages to find out water enough for 
Noah's Flood, have ventured upon an expedient more brisk and bold 
than any of the Ancients durst venture upon. They say Noah's 
Flood was not universal, but a national inundation, confined to 
Judea or those countries thereabouts; and, consequently, there 
would not be so much water necessary for a deluge of that kind." 
" If the Deluge was confined to those countries, I do not see 
but the borderers might have escaped, shifting a little into the ad- 
jacent places where the Deluge did not reach. But especially 
what needed so much ado to build an Ark to save Noah and his f am- 



652 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ily, if he might have saved himself and them only BY RETIRING into 
some neighboring country ; as Lot and Lis family saved themselves 
by withdrawing from Sodom when the city was to be destroyed ? 
Had not this been a far easier thing, and more expeditious than 
the great preparations he made of a large vessel, with rooms for 
the reception and accommodation of beasts and birds? And 
now I mention Birds, why could not they, at least, have flown 
into the next dry country ? They might have perched upon the 
trees and the tops of the mountains, by the way, to have rested 
themselves if they were weary, for the waters did not all of a 
sudden rise to the mountains' tops." "But to argue with them 
upon their own grounds — Let us suppose only the Asiatic and 
Armenian mountains covered with waters ; then, unless there 
Was a miracle to keep these waters upon heaps, they would flow 
throughout the earth." " We may as well, then, expect that the 
Leman Lake should swell to the tops of the Alps, on the one 
hand, and the mountains of Switzerland and Burgundy on the 
other, and then stop, without overflowing the plain countries 
that lie beyond them." 

Burnet, therefore, did not write in vain; for he now comes 
forward to meet a doctrine far more mischievous at the present 
day than when he flourished. 

Eeturning again to the destructive effects of the Flood, we 
meet with the interrogatory— whence came the subsequent veg- 
etation? That very natural inquiry I shall answer in my con- 
sideration of the Coal-fields (Appendix III.). In the mean time, 
some readers will doubtless feel alarmed for the safety of the 
Ark itself during its long exposure upon the tempestuous wa- 
ters, especially considering its vast dimensions. But to quiet 
their apprehensions, I would say, in the first place, that it ought 
not to be doubted that the same conservative principle was in 
operation in that, and in all other respects, as manifested itself 
from the very beginning, when Noah, was commanded to build 
the Ark, " to keep seed alive upon all the face of the earth." It 
would have been hardly consistent, after such preparations, to 
have left the vessel and its cargo to the destructive effects of the 
Flood ; or, if it be preferred, it is not impossible that the Ark, 
like the Olive, may have been sheltered in some ravine of Mount 
Ararat. (See Appendix III.) But we have an ample reason 



APPENDIX II.— THE ELOOD. 653 

for concluding that there may have been a special Interposition 
on such an occasion in our Lord's rebuke of the wind and the 
waves for so comparatively small a circumstance as the preser- 
vation of Peter's life. Peter also " walked upon the water to go 
to Jesus ; saying, Lord, save me. And the Lord said unto him, 
thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" We may 
therefore rely upon the assurance that " God remembered Noah, 
and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in 
the Ark," and therefore, also, the Ark itself. 



654 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 



APPENDIX III. 

THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 

It is my purpose in this Appendix to demonstrate very briefly 
(as already set forth in my work on Theoretical Geology) the de- 
pendence of the Coal-fields upon the Noachian Flood, and to in- 
dicate the modus operandi of that catastrophe in their production. 
It will be found to explain, in the most natural manner, all the 
difficult problems known in Geology as the " enigmas of the 
Coal-fields " — such as the general occurrence in northern as well 
as equatorial regions of tropical plants throughout their wide ex- 
tent ; the interposition of fossiliferous and other mineral strata ; 
faults, dikes, breaks, &c. ; the preservation of ferns and other 
delicate plants in a perfect condition ; the strata of coal formed 
exclusively of leaves; the immense thickness of other strata; the 
absence of boulders and of other mineral rubbish ; their general 
limitation to nearly a level with the ocean, or in valleys beneath 
the level ; their occurrence mostly upon the southerly and east- 
erly aspect of mountains ; and whatever else, in this connection, 
that has given rise to a voluminous mass of speculations. More- 
over, we shall have thus found in the Coal-fields themselves, and 
in each one of their " enigmas," the greatest monumental proof 
of a desolating and universal Flood. It is for the development 
of this proof, especially, that I have undertaken the inquiry, and 
as one of the principal means of sustaining the Sacred Narrative, 
and thus rendering it instrumental in crushing out the material- 
ism of the age. 

I may say, however, at the outset, that we might rest our great 
subject upon the extent of the Coal-fields alone ; as will be suffi- 
ciently apparent as our inquiries advance. The Coal-measures 
occupy about 300,000 square miles of the earth's surface, or 
about a two-hundredth part of all the dry land, so far as yet 
discovered. Whence came the vegetable material, and at one 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 655 

particular period, for all this imbedded carbon? Theoretical 
Geology answers — " From an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas !" 
But whence came the carbonic acid gas? Granting, however, 
an assumption so full of absurdities as it respects animal and 
vegetable life, such an atmosphere would not begin to explain, 
upon the geological hypothesis, the amount of the vegetable ma- 
terial in any of the thickest strata. 

Again, where should we expect, upon our diluvian theory, to 
find the greatest amount of coal? Certainly in the United States 
of North America, southerly and easterly of the Eocky Mount- 
ains. It was not doubted by Geology, when it recognized the 
General Deluge, that it had its rise in the south-east; and the 
current, therefore, rushing in a north-westerly direction, would 
have swept the forests of the two Americas into the region of 
the United States, upon the easterly and southerly face of the 
mountains. The facts correspond with my theory. Of the 
300,000 square miles of Coal-fields, 200,000, at least, lie in the 
United States, and the remaining 100,000 (which is a large es- 
timate) are distributed over the rest of the world. But there 
doubtless remains to be discovered in the New World a far 
greater extent of this repository than the foregoing. Already, 
in the newly-settled State of Iowa, it is estimated that the bitu- 
minous Coal-fields occupy an area of 20,000 square miles. Was 
there in this region a greater concentration of carbonic acid than 
in all other quarters of the globe to an extent of more than ten 
times the ratio? While it should be considered, also, that nei- 
ther animal nor vegetable life could have existed in the most 
moderate degree of the supposed atmosphere. Temperature is 
also an indispensable element in expounding an excess of vege- 
tation in a region of country over that of all others ; and were 
there, therefore, any foundation for the geological hypothesis of 
local growth, the tropical climates should possess the greatest 
bulk of the Coal-fields; to which may be added the very con- 
clusive fact that plants of tropical growth form the most abun- 
dant material of the Coal-fields, even in high and dark northern 
latitudes. Moreover, we must look for their formation to a cause 
in simultaneous operation over the entire globe, and which came 
to an end in an equally simultaneous manner, and which has 
never been renewed, even upon the smallest scale. The cause 



656 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

was, therefore, entirely foreign to the processes of nature. It 
was a cause, also, in perfect consistency with an antecedent tran- 
quillity of the earth as favorable to vegetation as at the present 
day ; and therefore the abundance of vegetation itself declares 
the fallacy of the geological assumption of universal torrents of 
water during the "carboniferous era," while the assumption is 
rendered still farther discreditable to Theoretical Geology by its 
demands for many alternations of tranquillity and luxuriant veg- 
etations, and "submersions," and "upheavals," wherever a Coal- 
field is to be found. 

Although the foregoing considerations manifestly disprove the 
geological interpretation of the slow formation of the Coal-fields, 
they may not so clearly refer their origin to the Noachian Flood ; 
and in demonstrating the latter, the multitude of facts which 
will be employed for the purpose will be simultaneously arrayed 
against the geological hypothesis. But in the first place I may 
state that it is the general doctrine of Theoretical Geology that 
the Coal-fields are transformations of plants which grew in their 
neighborhood, and which were washed down by torrents of wa- 
ter into lakes and estuaries of seas, where they became overlaid 
by mineral strata. It is the doctrine, also, that there were as 
many successive growths of plants, generally of the large forest 
trees of tropical climates, and as many torrents of water as there 
are strata of coal in the different formations respectively. The 
hypothesis also assigns the strata of sand and clay to other tor- 
rents which happened during the suspension of vegetation ; but 
it neglects all provision for renewals of vegetation, both as to 
seeds and soil, after the desolating torrents had ploughed its sup- 
posed favorite regions. But it sees no absurdities in the assump- 
tion of " an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas " to obtain an ade- 
quate supply of vegetation, and to expound the universal distri- 
bution of the Coal-fields. Nor does it explain how fragments 
of rocks and other mineral rubbish failed of being commingled 
with the strata of coal ; besides other neglected " enigmas " which 
will engage our attention. In its characteristic manner it dis- 
poses of the numerous cases where the mineral strata consist of 
mountain limestone, and such as embrace marine-shells, by sub- 
merging the Coal-fields, but not the adjacent land, and without 
deranging the strata when submerged by the agency of ingulf- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 657 

ing earthquakes ; and when vegetation is ready for another stra- 
tum of coal, an upheaving earthquake is invented to bring up 
the Coal-fields to an exact level, without disturbing their hori- 
zontal plane and well-adjusted strata, or molesting the adjacent 
timber - growing country. This process of sinking for mineral 
strata, and upheaving for the reception of layers of coal, is re- 
peated as often as the calcareous strata may occur in any Coal- 
field, and is distinguished by as much evidence of design as 
the inventive ingenuity which found it out. But apparently a 
greater evidence of design consists in the failure of the torrents 
of water which hurl down the trees to carry along the mineral 
rubbish with the vegetable material, while other torrents ensue 
for the special purpose of sweeping down those mineral strata 
which can not be obtained by submerging the Coal-fields be- 
neath the ocean. Farther: as the Coal-fields are allowed to be 
of simultaneous formation, it follows that the torrents of water 
were also of simultaneous occurrence over the face of the earth, 
succeeded by calms most favorable to a luxuriant vegetation, 
and without any analogies in the previous or subsequent history 
of the earth. It is assumed, also, that the Coal-fields after their 
formation were extensively invaded by "dikes" and "faults," 
as the result of violent volcanic action. And it is farther as- 
sumed that there existed at the highest locality in northern re- 
gions a tropical temperature during the "carboniferous era," and, 
of necessity, a simultaneous equatorial temperature of 200 de- 
grees; this condition of things being supposed to have occupied 
about a million of years, when it came as abruptly to an end as 
it had its beginning. This exalted temperature is assumed for 
the single purpose of accounting for the universal presence of 
tropical plants in the Coal-fields; just as it is assumed that the 
earth was once invested with a coating of ice, for the only pur- 
pose of explaining the mineral drift occasioned by the General 
Deluge; and this, too, when Geology avows that the earth was 
cooling down from its assumed molten state to its present tem- 
perature, somewhere about the time of the exalted heat demand- 
ed by the tropical plants of the Coal-formations. (See Appendix 
II.) Although it is superfluous to quote Theoretical Geology 
upon this subject, it is interesting to listen to its own lan- 
guage, which is so indicative of our diluvian theory. Thus 

42 



, 



658 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE* SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

it is said by Sir Charles Lyell, in his Principles of Geology, 
that — 

"It is from the ancient coal deposits that the most extraordina- 
ry evidence has been supplied in proof of the former existence 
of an extremely hot climate in those latitudes which are now the 
temperate and cooler regions of the globe." But Sir Charles has 
no difficulty with this problem, or that in relation to darkness; 
for he invents a special law of organic nature to sustain this par- 
ticular assumption. Thus he says that — " We must not forget 
that the coal-plants were of perfectly distinct species (from those 
now living), and may have been endowed with a different consti- 
tution, enabling them to bear a greater variation of circum- 
stances." 

And thus Bakewell, in his Geology— u It is truly deserving 
attention, that the vegetable fossils found in distant parts of the 
world, and under very different latitudes, are nearly identical with 
those in the European Coal-fields. The plants in the Coal-fields 
of North America, and even the specimens from Greenland, are 
analogous to those in the English Coal-fields ; and the few speci- 
mens that have been obtained from the tropical regions in Amer- 
ica, from New Holland, and from India, belong to the same fami- 
lies as those which we find in the coal-strata of Europe. Now 
if we admit these distant beds of coal to be of contemporaneous 
formation, we must admit, also, that the temperature of the 
whole globe was, at that epoch, nearly the same in very differ- 
ent latitudes; or, were we to suppose that these Coal-fields were 
formed in different epochs, we must still grant that northern lat- 
itudes have once enjoyed the same temperature as countries 
under the equator." Such is the universal doctrine in Theoret- 
ical Geology. 

It is interesting to observe the manner in which a Providen- 
tial Design, is made to issue from the devastating forces which 
are said to have brought about the Coal-formations. Thus, the 
Eev. Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology, after 
saying that " The gigantic calamites, the stately lepidodendra, 
and sigillarise, were torn away by storms and inundations of a hot 
and humid climate, and transported to some adjacent lake, or es- 
tuary, or sea, and buried in the detritus of adjacent lands" — re- 
marks in another place, that, " However remote may have been 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 659 

the periods at which these materials of future beneficial dispen- 
sations were laid up in store, we may fairly assume that, besides 
the immediate purposes effected at or before the time of their dep- 
osition in the strata of the earth, an ulterior prospective view to 
the future uses of man formed part oftJw design with which they 
were, ages ago, disposed in a manner so admirably adapted to the 
benefit of the human race. 11 

Geologists have also associated with the Coal-fields, as evi- 
dences of design, the occurrence of beds of iron ore in the strata 
of slaty clay that alternate with the beds of coal, and the lime- 
stone that serves as a flux. Even Bakewell, with all his "tor- 
rents of water," "upheavals and submersions," when writing 
from his " Easy-Chair," can not forego, for the benefit of the 
doctrine of violent causes, an expression of admiration when con- 
templating the obvious designs manifested by the Coal-forma- 
tions. Thus — 

u Before concluding these observations," he says, " it may be 
permitted to remark, that, however ancient the formation of coal 
and iron-stone may have been, the frequent occurrence of these 
minerals together, both destined in future time to give to man 
an extensive empire over the elements, and to contribute largely 
to his means of civilization and comfort, can not fail to impress 
the reflecting mind with evidence of prospective Designing In- 
telligence." 

And to the same effect the distinguished theoretical geologist, 
the Eev. Mr. Conybeare — all of which the reader will naturally 
ascribe to an event that was not simply under the blind forces 
of inorganic nature: 

" The occurrence of the most useful of the metals, 11 says Cony- 
beare, " in immediate connection with the fuel requisite for its 
reduction, and the limestone which facilitates that reduction, is an 
instance of arrangement so happily suited to the purposes of hu- 
man industry, that it can hardly be considered as reasoning un- 
necessarily to final causes if we conceive that this distribution of 
the rude materials of the earth 'was determined with a view to the 
convenience of its inhabitants. 11 — Geology of England and Wales. 

All this is the more remarkable, considering how the origin of 
the earth is handed over to Pluto, and the creation of the organic 
kingdom to the inorganic (Chapters VII. and VIII.). But as no 



660 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

one will surmise that the tempests, &c, to which Theoretical Ge- 
ology refers the Coal -formations were miraculously instituted, 
but were owing to purely natural causes, the results would have 
been equally a natural consequence, and not in the least an ema- 
nation from Design. But it will soon be rendered obvious that 
what are thus supposed to have been the results of Design could 
have never been effected by the causes to which they are as- 
signed. Our Authors also, like many others of the same geo- 
logical faith, have regarded with astonishment the methodical 
condition and the inestimable uses of the Coal-fields, when con- 
templating the reckless nature of their supposed causes. They 
could not resist the evidences of Design when contrasted with 
what their premises would inculcate ; and I have thus availed 
myself of this testimony in behalf of the Eoachian Flood, whose 
scheme was overflowing with Designs, and under the immediate 
superintendence of the Creator. 

Without the interpretation supplied by the General Deluge, 
the origin of the Coal-fields, and their so-called "enigmas," 
would be an impenetrable mystery ; and although many of its 
most important events were under the immediate direction of 
Providence, yet, as I have endeavored to show in Appendix 
IL, there was no such interposition beyond the exigencies 
that demanded it. All else was delegated to natural causes, 
and the Coal-formations were one of their united results. There 
was, therefore, no immediate Design attending them, but, as will 
be shown, they were a necessary consequence of the Designs for 
the institution of the universal debacle. The waters simply de- 
posited the vegetable material, and occasioned the interposition 
of the ferruginous, calcareous, and other mineral strata, according 
to the positions in which they had been placed by antecedent 
causes, and as will be soon described. But none shall say that 
this vast miraculous event, instituted for the general extermina- 
tion of the human race, was not so ordained as to have embraced 
a countervailing result that should bear its testimony to all fu- 
ture generations, that the desolating catastrophe was designed in 
Infinite "Wisdom and Goodness. Here is afforded an interpreta- 
tion of the supposed designs manifested in the Coal-formations 
which reason may sanction ; while, on the contrary, it revolts at 
the hypothesis which supposes that a stupendous system of spe- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 661 

cial designs was owing to the reckless fury of tornadoes, submer- 
sions and upheavals, alternated by a luxuriant vegetation pervad- 
ing the whole earth — as well at the poles as at the equator — and 
lasting through a million of years, with the help of that most un- 
scientific condition of things, a universal tropical temperature to 
be quickly succeeded by that equal paradox which has given 
rise to the " glacial theory." ! ! 

We will now advance to our more specific objects. As a nec- 
essary effect of the sudden organization of the globe, which I 
have endeavored to establish by undoubted facts (Appendix I.), 
there would have not only occurred, as we have seen, an early 
eruption of the great mountain ranges, but the earth would have 
become progressively, though early, studded over with hills, 
many of which, until projected upward, were covered with wa- 
ter, as denoted by aquatic fossils. Nevertheless, it is in no re- 
spect necessary or useful to us to look beyond the present facts 
for our purposes. It is sufficient that the mountain-ranges, sub- 
alpine cliffs, and minor elevations bearing sedimentary deposits, 
existed, as now, at a period anterior to the General Deluge ; and 
from the overwhelming nature of that catastrophe, it will be easy 
to show that multitudes of hills composed of the early detritus 
were levelled to the surface. The abundant creation of aquatic 
animals on the fifth of the Mosaic Days explains the appearance 
of testaceous fossils on the summits of lofty mountains, and the 
rapid multiplication of the same animals answers for the greater 
abundance in hills of a somewhat later date. And from what 
we have seen of the rapidity with which much of the sediment- 
ary strata advanced at the earliest age of the earth (Appendix 
I.), we are amply supplied with hills composed of sedimentary 
deposits of sand, ferruginous earthy matter, clay, &c. ; all of 
which, so far as we are now interested, were upheaved antece- 
dently to the Flood and to the formation of the " tertiary strata." 
I may add, also, that I agree entirely with Theoretical Geology 
that the General Deluge could not have produced the regular 
formations which compose the crust of the earth, and therefore 
as it regards this question we may dismiss it from our present 
contemplations. (See Appendix I.) 

It is another important element of our subject that, as we have 
seen, until the invention of the u Glacial Theory," it was consid- 



662 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ered a well settled fact that the Flood had its rise in southern 
regions, and advanced to the north-westerly, while the recession 
of the waters was in the opposite direction. It was also sup- 
posed that the southerly and easterly course of the boulders de- 
noted a more violent movement of the waters when they retired 
from the dry land than during their invasion. Nor was the con- 
clusion as to the irruption of the waters in the southern hemi- 
sphere at all founded upon the Coal-formations ; and we have 
therefore the advantage of this corroborating testimony. 

We have already had before us the proofs accumulated by 
Theoretical Geology, particularly by the Eev. Dr. Buckland in 
his Reliquiae Diluviance, of the universality of a Flood and of its 
overpowering violence ; to which I will now add the following 
summary, by Sir Chaeles Lyell, of the conclusions which 
were founded by Dr. Buckland upon the facts which were em- 
braced in that celebrated work. It is said by Sir Charles, that — 

" By Dr. Buckland the Deluge has been represented as a vio- 
lent and transient rush of waters, which tore up the soil to a great 
depth, excavated valleys, gave rise to immense beds of shingle, 
carried fragments of rocks and gravel from one point to another, 
and during its advance and retreat strewed the valleys, and even 
the tops of many hills, with alluvium." In that work Dr. Buck- 
land affirms that " The discoveries of modern Geology, founded 
upon the accurate observation of natural phenomena, prove to a 
demonstration that there has been a universal inundation of the 
earth." 

That " demonstration " was held to be conclusive till the in- 
vention of the " Glacial Theory," when it was suddenly aban- 
doned for the greater novelty. I have therefore given to the 
subject a critical examination in Appendix II., in connection 
with other evidences of the Noachian Flood ; and having there 
brought the boulders and other associated drift as living wit- 
nesses of that general catastrophe, we may now consult the Nar- 
rative itself, where we shall find that the rapidity with which 
the waters are said to have " returned from off the earth " shows 
particularly the violence of their recession, and thus harmonizes 
with the distribution of the boulders ; while the time occupied 
by the rise of the waters, according to the same authority, 
equally denotes their more gradual progress, and thus explains 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. 663 

the limitation of their ravages to the overthrow of the forests 
and the deposition of the material upon a near level with the 
ocean. But the Scripture statements are so remarkable for ex- 
actness, we will have some of them before us. Thus it is said 
that " The waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty 
days," while in seventy -seven days afterwards, or, "In the sev- 
enth month and seventeenth day of the month the Ark rested 
upon the mountains of Ararat " — besides other corresponding 
statements relative to the dove and the raven, which alike de- 
clare a rapid and violent recession of the waters — the Ark, as 
we have seen, being particularly cared for either by a direct in- 
terposition of Providence, or by a sheltering afforded by the 
mountains — for the inspired Penman is careful to say that 
" God remembered Noah and all that was with him in the Ark." 

From what has been now said of diluvian drift, it is not in- 
tended to be implied that all which is observable upon the sur- 
face of the earth is referable to the Koachian Flood. Yery far 
from it; though I recognize no "geological deluges" as concur- 
ring causes. Great accumulations, however, of gravel, sand, and 
rolled stones may be traced to ancient lakes, deposited either in 
their beds, or wafted over the neighboring country when the 
barriers gave way. It is also evident that many other local ac- 
cumulations of mineral substances owe their origin to the dis- 
integration of mountains and the overflowing of rivers, some of 
which w T ere antecedent to the Deluge, and others have been in 
progress ever since. But these are of a local character, while the 
drift of the Deluge is universal. The former can never be con- 
founded by the practised eye with the latter, which are spread 
out upon an unlimited surface, or accumulated in hills, remote 
from mountains, lakes, and rivers. But to the Noachian Flood 
belong, in a general sense, the large boulders, or "erratics," and 
the scratches. Of the latter it is said by Prof. Silliman, in his 
Appendix to BaheweWs Geology, that — 

"The existence of scratches and furrows upon many rocks, 
probably upon all when the diluvium is first removed from them, 
appears to prove that they have been subjected to movements 
of heavy bodies passing over them." " The direction of these 
scratches on this continent, as well as in Europe, is such as to 
give the idea of a current or irruption from the North." 



Mi PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

With these premises, I proceed to say that the necessary result 
of the Flood would have been an uprooting of all the forests of 
the globe ; and at that era the earth must have been generally 
covered with heavy timber.* The tropical regions were, doubt- 

* Sir Charles Lyell produces, as a principal objection to the Narrative of the 
Flood, the olive-leaf brought to the Ark by the dove. He says that "It is clear 
that they who are most desirous of pointing out the coincidence of geological phe- 
nomena with the occurrence of such a general catastrophe, must not neglect one of the 
circumstances connected with the Mosaic History , least of all so remarkable a fact as 
the olive remaining standing while the waters were abating." 

The defenders of Revelation have no disposition to evade the statements in the 
Narrative of the Flood, any more than they have in that of Creation. But they in- 
sist that those of the latter shall be received in the same literal sense, and argued ac- 
cordingly, which Theoretical Geology requires in relation to the Flood. As to the 
olive leaf, it is sufficient to say that many trees must have been protected by the ra- 
vines and notches of mountains, and that, if denuded of their foliage, a new crop of 
leaves might have appeared within a very few days after the tops of the trees or 
shrubs had emerged from the waters. This will become more evident on consider- 
ing another objection that has been often made, that "the tops of the mountains 
were seen only on the tenth month." Whereas the statement is, "In the tenth 
month Avere the tops of the mountains seen." But it does not follow, therefore, that 
they might not have been seen at a much earlier time, or, according to my interpre- 
tation, at any period of the Flood. From the surrounding context the statement 
appears to be of that precise, final nature, which is, as we have seen (Chapter XIV.), 
so conspicuous in the delay of all special allusion to the sun, moon, and stars until 
the fourth day of Creation. But we come to a fact which shows that this interpre- 
tation is right, and which corresponds with that which I have made of the statement 
that the waters prevailed, on an average, "fifteen cubits upward;" that is to say, 
" The Ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the 
mountains of Ararat." Here, then, it appears that these mountains could have been, 
and undoubtedly were seen at least two months and a half before the supposed time ; 
and if, as appears in another place (Appendix II.), the Ark rested upon the base of 
the two adjacent mountains, it is in the highest degree probable that the waters had 
not been at any time accumulated upon their tops, but only moved interruptedly over 
them. Such, also, will be made to appear of the summits of all other lofty mountains. 
The two mountains of Ararat are also so limited that they would not have afforded 
that resistance to the waters, either at their rise or subsidence, by which they were 
accumulated to a greater height and more permanently upon ranges of mountains. 
This, also, makes another provision for our much-needed olive, or whatever plant it 
was ; for it may have been flourishing within the region of vegetation, either between 
the two mountains or on their southerly side, during the entire period of the Flood. 

We find, also, in what is said of the birds a confirmation of our premises. The 
waters had not wholly " retired " when the dove was sent forth at the beginning of 
the tenth month. They had been decreasing more gradually since the seventh month, 
in consequence of a vast removal of their superincumbent pressure ; but their reces- 
sion still went on rapidly, for in seven days after the first mission of the dove the 
bird brought in the olive-leaf, and in seven days more, "she returned not again to 



APPENDIX III.— THE C0AL-F0KMAT10NS 665 

less, one universal forest. Such, indeed, is an important fact in 
Theoretical Geology ; and not only so, but it clothes the arctic 
regions with a tropical vegetation. Its gigantic growth is also 
generally presented forcibly to the imagination in aid of the 
"carboniferous era;" and, to invent still farther a sufficient sup- 
ply of vegetable material, and to aid in expounding the univer- 
sality of the Coal-fields, an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas, as 
we have seen, is made to enact a conspicuous part in geological 
science. Just in proportion, however, as the growth of plants 
was vigorous, the assumption of a carbonaceous atmosphere is 
so much the greater violation of a principal law of organic life 
as it respects the vegetable kingdom ; while the admitted con- 
temporaneous existence of animals renders the hypothesis ridic- 
ulous. Air-breathing Serpents are said to have been " the Lords 
of Creation " at that particular epoch. But Theoretical Geology 
is entitled at all times to speak for itself. No better authority 
can be consulted than the " Typical Forms and Special Ends of 
Creation " (1856), by the Eev. Dr. McCosh and Dr. Dickie : 

" We can not doubt," says the Typiccd Forms, " that the plants 
composing the earliest flora required supplies for their full de- 
velopment. In the vegetables of the carboniferous epoch we 
can recognize the existence of agents destined to perform an im- 
portant part in the economy of those days. While able to ob- 
tain abundance of necessary pabulum to build up their organs 
and add to their carbonaceous ingredients, they were, at the 
same time, preparing the way for the advent of animals by sub- 
tracting the excess of a gas noxious to animal life." 

Brongniart, who, in his Prodrome des Vegetaux Fossiles, in- 
troduced this hypothesis, employs the same language, supposing 
"a great excess of carbonic acid " to have been necessary to the 
growth of gigantic ferns, lycopodia, &c, and that the atmosphere 
was thus gradually prepared for animals. 

Nothing, however, has appeared in the Coal-formations at all 

Noah any more." And here we may see the truthfulness of this simple statement 
concerning the dove by comparing it with that relative to the raven, who "went 
forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth," according to the 
natural independence of this bird ; while the dove obeyed its own instinctive impulse 
of seeking protection in the Ark, and Noah acted in conformity to the instinctive 
movements of either. No Naturalist could have drawn a better portrait of the habits 
of these two birds. 



666 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT, 

comparable in size with the trees that are frequently seen in tem- 
perate zones, as on the Ohio Eiver and in California ; which set- 
tles the fact that there was nothing peculiarly conducive to the 
growth of plants at the "carboniferous era," but, on the con- 
trary, that it was very much such an era as our own. Theoret- 
ical Geology is, therefore, environed with difficulties in providing 
the necessary vegetable material in the vicinity of the Coal-fields. 
But what thoroughly overthrows the assumed universal tropical 
vegetation, and supplies an insuperable proof of the General Del- 
uge, is the positive necessity of sunlight without long interrup- 
tions, to any thing like a growth of plants exceeding the most 
inferior orders. Light is regarded, indeed, in the now prevailing 
doctrine of "Correlation or Equivalence and Conservation of 
Forces," as not only the vital force of plants, but, through that 
medium by which it is treasured up, as the Vital Principle, and 
the source of Mind, in man and animals. Now Coal-fields exist 
at Melville Island, in the Arctic Ocean, whose only vegetation at 
present is moss and weeds; while the coal embraces the usual 
tropical plants. Nor will it be credited that, however exalted 
may have been the ancient temperature of its climate, but with 
nights prolonged for three months, it could have ever yielded a 
growth of plants of much higher rank than mosses and lichens.* 
But it is innate with Theoretical Geology to prefer darkness to 
light. It began by rearing its fossilized plants and animals dur- 
ing those long ages of darkness which it assumed to have inter- 
vened between "the beginning" and the creation of light; and 
in endeavoring to escape from that dilemma by prolonging the 
Mosaic Days, it neglected the alternations of long periods of dark- 
ness which formed the nights of those imaginary days. (Chapter 
XIV.) Another insuperable objection to the hypothesis of a 
tropical vegetation, and which absolutely proves the transporta- 
tion of the tropical plants from equatorial regions, is the fact 
that the exuviae of such plants are nowhere found outside of the 
torrid zone, excepting in the Coal-formations. 

* Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, stated at a meeting of the American Institute 
of Science (April, 1870), that — "Among other matters of scientific value, I discov- 
ered extensive beds of coal in Greenland, showing how different, in a former geolog- 
ical epoch, must have been the climate." It is also lately ascertained that Alaska 
abounds with coal. 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 667 

Among our most natural inquiries is that of the ultimate dis- 
posal of the inconceivable amount of vegetable matter which 
must have been prostrated by the Flood, if such an event have 
happened. Where is it ? What has become of it ? Assuming 
an ignorance of the existence of the Coal-fields, and the proba- 
bility of the Flood, our premises are such as to render it certain 
that no small proportion of the uprooted forests must have been 
entombed in the earth, probably beneath the diluvial mineral 
drift ; or if nowhere found, the General Deluge would be greatly 
discredited as wanting in one of its indispensable results ; and 
all the other stupendous proof of its occurrence — the sublime di- 
mensions of the Ark, the mineral drift, all the inspired knowl- 
edge of the Prophet and Apostles, the tradition of the Jews and 
of all nations, our Lord's confirmation of the event — would con- 
found us with astonishment, and the triumph of the "Glacial 
Theory " would be our climax of confusion. As it seems prob- 
able, therefore, that when the diluvian waters receded they de- 
posited their mineral drift upon the masses of vegetable matter 
which must have been left upon the surface of the earth at the 
rise of the waters, we are surprised, on digging down, that it is 
not there ! But a little reflection satisfies us that it has probably 
been accumulated in masses and limited localities by the obsta- 
cles it encountered in hills and mountains, and that therefore it 
must be the work of time and accident to detect the isolated 
spots. At last it comes! And we find it, in correspondence 
with our anticipations, imbedded in materials native to the local- 
ities. Kevelation triumphs, and Theoretical Geology falls before 
it. This, however, is only the groundwork of our proof. 

But how were the forests accumulated so generally upon a 
level with the ocean when nothing but hills could have arrested 
their onward movement ; and often no hills are seen over an ex- 
tensive area to expound the phenomenon? This, indeed, must 
be very embarrassing to Theoretical Geology in its pursuit of 
those mineral strata which the land only can supply. But all 
this is exactly what our diluvian theory demands. It requires 
these hills not only as an obstacle to the drift of the flood-wood, 
but also for their demolition to supply the material of the min- 
eral strata. We have seen that, as they were evidently thrown 
up at an early age of the earth, the low places which are occu- 



668 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

pied by Coal-fields were, doubtless, thickly studded over with 
them. (Appendix I.) The basins or valleys in which the de- 
posits were made, as well as the mineral strata, render it certain 
that such elevations existed, and the abundance of the " dikes " 
and "breaks, or faults," equally confirm the fact, as will soon ap- 
pear. There has, therefore, been a cause of the general abrasion 
of these hills ; and as there could have been no other of such a 
common phenomenon in its connection with the Coal-basins than 
a universal flood, the disappearance of the hills from above the 
surface of the ground is another immense proof of that catastro- 
phe, and scarcely less so their remains beneath the surface in the 
aspect of " dikes," and which are among the most troublesome 
" enigmas " to Theoretical Geology. We are thus, also, supplied 
in these hills with all the requisite material for the mineral 
strata, so only we can adjust them rightly. 

But as Theoretical Geology will object to these hills, notwith- 
standing our facts, we must interpose its own premises. How, 
therefore, I ask, does Geology, upon its own hypothesis that the 
Coal-fields were deposited in estuaries, lakes, and valleys, obtain 
the strata of sand and clay but from the very hills to which we 
refer them, and from which it gets its supply of vegetable mate- 
rial ? True, it is especially embarrassed as to those strata ; but 
coming to such as consist of limestone and the fossiliferous, it 
has the very summary method of resorting to " submersions be- 
neath the ocean and upheavals," in the numerical ratio of the 
mineral and coal strata that make up the deposit. 

I proceed, therefore, to say that, such was the accumulation of 
forests, they must have overturned, more or less, every unconsol- 
idated hill of the secondary class which they may have encoun- 
tered by their collisions. If the torrent of water alone, when 
returning from the earth, was capable of crumbling the tops of 
granite mountains, and everywhere transporting massive boulders 
and other ponderous mineral drift to distances which astonish 
the contemplative mind, nay, of simply uprooting the forests, 
what should have been the effect of immense accumulations of 
trees, urged on by such an impetuous force, when encountering 
hills of unconsolidated materials? And here it is important to 
consider that the arenaceous, argillaceous, and other material of 
the mineral strata of the Coal-formations did not exist in a solid- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EOKMATIONS. 669 

ified state, but simply in the condition of sand, clay, ferruginous 
earth, plastic limestone, &c, the last of which is still found soft 
at the bottom of lakes, with or without imbedded shells ; and 
this is as necessary for Theoretical Geology as for ourselves. 
Indeed, such was the soft condition of all the sedimentary strata 
of the earth when brought into their present position ; and al- 
though I have argued that subject upon the ground of its hav- 
ing consisted to a large extent of the detritus of the primary 
rocks, the presumption is strong, especially on account of the 
density of the strata and the rapidity with which they were 
formed, that a large proportion of what is not referable to an 
oceanic source consisted of the loose material which resulted 
from the organization of the globe, and which was at once suf- 
ficient for the purposes of organic life. (See Appendix I.) 

And now a word as to the fossiliferous strata, especially when 
those of salt and fresh water occur, as they sometimes do, in the 
same Coal-field, forming one of the greatest " enigmas " in The- 
oretical Geology. In this embarrassing case, Geology sees no 
expedient but that of resorting to marine "submersions and up- 
heavals," as far as demanded by the salt-water strata, and, for 
the fresh, substitutes, at intervals, "submersions and upheavals in 
fresh-water lakes." [!] On the contrary, how simple the solution 
supplied by my diluvian theory. In these complex instances 
the vegetable matter had been deposited in estuaries of the sea 
and in neighboring lakes, in the former of which fossiliferous 
limestone had been elevated or washed up into hills, and in the 
latter the like material of the fresh-water strata. The Deluge 
scooped out their waters, deposited its burden, laid the basins of 
water into one, and, as will be shown in the sequel, the imping- 
ing torrent, with its battering forest, completed a phenomenon 
which has been as much " a mystery of mysteries " to Theoret- 
ical Geology as " organic life." Where the fossiliferous limestone 
is purely oceanic, or derived from fresh water, Theoretical Geol- 
ogy, without regarding the presence of other mineral strata, sup- 
poses that the vegetable material was deposited either in estu- 
aries of the sea or in fresh - water lakes. It then proceeds to 
expound the fossiliferous strata by "submersions and upheavals 
of the Coal-fields," but supplies no information as to the source 
of other accompanying strata, such as arenaceous, ferruginous, &c. 



670 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

We agree, however, with. Theoretical Geology in supposing 
that in these cases the vegetable matter was deposited, in a gen- 
eral sense at least, either in lakes or in estuaries of the sea, 
though not at all as to the manner in which the fossiliferous 
limestone was deposited over the strata of coal. When the veg- 
etable substance was accumulated, the limestone and the material 
of the other mineral strata existed in the form of hills, which, 
when overturned by the impinging forests, simultaneously sup- 
plied, as will be seen, the material for the mineral strata. These 
hills being more or less immersed in the estuaries or lakes, their 
plastic condition was more perfectly preserved. This interpre- 
tation embraces not only the common limestone, but the sec- 
ondary magnesian or stratified dolomite, about which Theoretical 
Geology has many perplexities, particularly the coexistence of 
fossil exuviae, and some of the metals in the stratified variety 
of dolomite. Whatever foreign matter, whether metallic, or con- 
sisting of fragments of primitive rocks, may be embraced in the 
limestone strata, they must have been washed in from the sur- 
rounding land. 

Our diluvian theory has no difficulty with the fossiliferous 
strata ; while in a general sense the hills of the dry land yielded 
the other mineral substances, and probably, also, more or less of 
the fossiliferous limestone, as the collisions took place ; and the 
crumbling of the hills would have been farther promoted by the 
valleys at their base. The valleys received the vegetable mass 
when the undulations of the waves receded, and the earthy ma- 
terial, simultaneously precipitated from the hills, would have ef- 
fectually prevented a disturbance of the deposited forest at the 
next encounter. Hence it is that the Coal-fields lie in valleys or 
" basins." And here it is that we meet with those ruins of the 
antediluvian world mingled together — hills prostrated, forests 
imbedded. But vast as are the Coal - formations, they are far 
from being commensurate with the then existing vegetation. A 
proportion was devoted to the ocean; nevertheless, as the rise 
of the Flood was from the south-east, it is evident that a greater 
proportion would have been deposited upon land. 

Such, also, are our premises, that the grand commingling of 
hills and forests should have occurred upon the lowlands, where 
the latter met the first obstacles ; and this conclusion is sustained 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. 671 

by observation. " The regular, or great Coal-formation," says one 
of its principal expounders, "has never been discovered above the 
level of the sea. It is generally found towards the feet of great 
mountain-chains, or in valleys near the lofty mountain-ranges." 
And so, also, another — " The strata of the great Coal-formation," 
says Bakewell, " seldom attain any very great elevation, the prin- 
cipal Coal-districts being situated near the feet of elevated mountain- 
ranges" This is true, however, only in a limited sense ; much 
of the vegetable mass having been arrested and deposited before 
reaching "the feet of the great mountain-chains;" although, as 
will be seen, these lofty chains, however distant from the hills 
that arrested much of the floating material, contributed more or 
less as an obstacle to its progress. 

The hills that were overturned and now appear in the condi- 
tion of mineral strata in alternations with others of coal, would 
have been more or less an inadequate obstacle to the advancing 
flood- wood without some co-operation from the mountain-ranges ; 
while such of it as surmounted these low barriers was firmly ar- 
rested by the lofty chains. And here the reader may compre- 
hend distinctly the manner in which the waters must have been 
so accumulated as to have partially submerged the tops of high 
mountains, taking for our guide the average Scripture measure- 
ment of " fifteen cubits," or about twenty-seven feet. This ex- 
planation, I may remark, of what must have occurred reconciles 
perfectly the statements of the Narrative. The waters were 
rushing with greater violence than our swiftest rivers ; and if we 
imagine the effects of a dam across the Mississippi when charged 
with a surplus of water, as in freshets, there will be no difficulty 
in realizing the altitude of the waters when they were arrested 
by such a range of barriers as the Eocky Mountains, and how 
extensively and deeply must have been the consequent inunda- 
tion of the country on the southerly and easterly aspect of such 
ranges. An ordinary mill-dam supplies a clear illustration. The 
same consequences would have attended the recession of the wa- 
ters as it respects the northerly and westerly face of the mount- 
ains; and from its greater violence than the rise, the necessary 
result would have been a dislocation of the boulders from the 
summits of mountains, floating and tumbling over extensive re- 
gions. Theoretical Geology has hitherto laughed at the fifteen 



672 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

cubits of water when turning its attention to "all the high hills 
under the whole heaven." Nay, more: had the Inspired Writer 
intimated that all the high hills were not covered, in connection 
with the statement of the average depth of fifteen cubits, it 
would sooner or later have seriously affected the credibility of 
the Narrative. And considering, also, the incredulity of Theo- 
retical Geology as to the submersion of all the high hills, and 
how much more likely twenty-seven feet of water would have 
appeared to Moses as a greatly inadequate quantity, the state- 
ment must be received as a strong corroborating proof of the 
Divine Eevelation of the entire Narrative in all its verbal par- 
ticularities. 

We thus learn how the mountain-ranges were instrumental in 
the formation of the Coal-fields, even where they are separated 
by great distances. Their resistance of the force of the torrent 
contributed largely to the deposition of the flood -wood in the 
valleys and other regions below ; since these lofty barriers, by 
staying the current, added to the resistance of the lower hills, 
and the waters being now immensely accumulated, the forests 
should have been carried backward as the waves receded. 
Hence, also, in a general sense, the Coal-fields should lie on a 
southerly or easterly face of high mountain barriers; while, on 
the other hand, according to the geological hypothesis, they 
should have equally occurred on all sides. Nor should the co- 
incident proof be neglected in this connection, that the boulders 
and other associated diluvial drift should occur on all sides of 
mountains, according to the glacial or any other than the diluvial 
theory ; while, like the Coal-fields, they occupy the requisite po- 
sition on the southerly and easterly aspect of the mountains in 
all countries. (See Appendix II.) 

Still, it should be considered that the Deluge would, in all 
probability, have sometimes accumulated vegetable matter from 
the northern aspect of lofty mountains in sufficient abundance to 
have formed some minor Coal-fields in that direction ; especially 
where the ranges are not a continuous, but broken barrier, or 
when they may run in a northerly and southerly line. Our 
diluvian theory would also prompt the conclusion that the west- 
erly coast of South America, Australia, and the islands of the 
Pacific Ocean, would have furnished some materials for coal on 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FOKMATIONS. 673 

the westerly regions of the Eocky Mountains. It would also 
render it probable that we should sometimes meet with small 
localities of coal upon even high mountain-ranges ; especially 
within the tropics where vegetation is most luxuriant. Such is 
known to be the fact. But how will Theoretical Geology ex- 
pound this phenomenon in conformity with its local torrents of 
water, especially where coal presents itself upon lofty regions 
that are admitted to have been elevated long anterior to the 
"carboniferous era;" such, for example, as is reported by Hum- 
boldt to exist at Santa Fe de Bogota, at about 8700 feet above the 
sea, and, as is said by others, at the height of more than 14,000 
feet, near Huanico, and near to the region of perpetual frost? 

The foregoing exceptions point to the General Deluge as the 
only key that can open the way to these, as it does to the vari- 
ous other unexplained phenomena of the Coal-formations. As 
to any extensive deposits which are found upon hills, they have 
been elevated since the era of the Flood, as seen in the Pennsyl- 
vania anthracite Coal-fields. That these regions have been lifted 
up subsequently to the "carboniferous era" is as necessary to 
Theoretical Geology as to our diluvial theory, and it is farther 
shown by the disturbed condition of the strata, and by the con- 
version of the bituminous into anthracite coal by the agency of 
the volcanic heat requisite for the upheaval ; and which will be 
seen, also, to be fatal to the hypothesis of "submersions and up- 
heavals," since all the Coal-fields which Geology subjects to con- 
vulsions to obtain their calcareous and fossiliferous strata would 
have been equally disturbed and deprived of their bituminous 
matter. 

I shall now introduce some examples of the effects of earth- 
quakes, to enable the reader to clearly apprehend what would 
have been the general effect of " breaking up the great deep " 
(not improbably in part by the irruption of the newly discovered 
continent in the Antarctic region), and how it would have es- 
tablished a wave-like current which the vegetable drift supposes. 
Our illustrations consist of instances where the bottom of the 
ocean was slightly disturbed in recent times, and over a small 
extent only. When Lisbon was destroj^ed by an earthquake in 
1755, Cadiz was also severely shaken. 

"About an hour after," says a writer from the latter place, "on 

43 






674 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

looking out to sea, we saw a wave coming, at eight miles off, 
which was at least; fifty feet higher than common. It came against 
the west part of the town, which is very rocky, and the rocks 
abated a great deal of its force. At last it came upon the walls, 
and beat in the breastwork, and carried pieces of eight or ten tons 1 
iveight forty and fifty yards from the wall, and carried away the 
sand and walls. When the wave was gone, some parts that are 
deep at low water were quite dry, for the ivater retired with the 
same violence it came with. These waves came in this manner four 
or five times." Another writer gives the same account. — London 
Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlix., 1755. 

Bakewell, in describing the effects of earthquakes, has exactly 
parallel examples. Thus, in his Geology — " Towns situated on 
the coast, and nearly on a level with the sea, frequently experi- 
ence the most destructive effects from a sudden rise of the water 
during earthquakes. An immense wave is thrown with much 
violence over the houses, and on retiring carries with it the ruins 
left by the earthquake, and scatters them on the coast, or depos- 
its them in the ocean. The wave retires with great violence, and 
returns again until the equilibrium is restored." Illustrative exam- 
ples are then stated in the destructive effects of the earthquake 
on the coast of Chili, Feb., 1835. 

Again, it is remarked by Lyell that "Professor Sedgwick is 
inclined to adopt the hypothesis of M. Elie de Beaumont, that 
the sudden elevation of mountain -chains 'has been followed 
again and again by mighty waves desolating whole regions of 
the earth ; 7 a phenomenon which he thinks has • taken away all 
anterior incredibility from the fact of a recent deluge.''''' 1 — Principles, 
&c. Such, also, is exactly the opinion of the Eev. Dr. Buckland, 
as promulgated in his JReliquice Diluviance. 

It is even said by the Eev. Dr. Hitchcock, that — " In inquir- 
ing whether any natural causes could have produced the Deluge, 
we have shown that, of the three hypotheses maintained in mod- 
ern times on this subject, the sudden elevation of a mountain or 
continent by internal force is the only one that can be defended 
with any plausibility. If these convulsions be admitted, every rea- 
sonable man will allow that the Mosaic account of the Deluge 

STANDS FORTH FAIRLY AND FULLY VINDICATED FROM ANY COL- 
LISION with the facts of science. Nay, a presumption is here 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 675 

derived in favor of the Mosaie account. We are aware that some 
will be disappointed if we do not go farther, and say that Geol- 
ogy strictly confirms the Mosaic history, as it has been custom- 
ary to do in our popular treatises upon the Deluge. But we pre- 
fer to take our stand on firm ground" — American Biblical Repos- 
itory, Jan., 1838. (See Note at page 646.) 

And so also Professor Silliman, in his Appendix to Bakewell's 
Geology — " If the universal Deluge recorded in Genesis be taken 
as a type of diluvian action, and the time and the elevation 
stated in the history, as measured by existing mountains, be 
taken into the account, nothing could be more violent, destruc- 
tive, and overwhelming ; and certainly upon the face of the 

EARTH ARE EVERYWHERE RECORDED IN LEGIBLE CHARACTERS 
THE NECESSARY PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF SUCH A DEBACLE." 

"These necessary physical effects," therefore, establish the 
fact of a universal Deluge, whether the Mosaic Narrative be ad- 
mitted or not. But it is more than probable that what we shall 
have shown will appear to the unprejudiced a full confirmation 
of the Divine Authenticity of the Eecord, since by no possibility 
could its writer have gathered his information of the universality 
of the catastrophe either from geological research or from tradi- 
tion ; while also, as we have seen, he could have known nothing 
of the necessary dimensions of the Ark (Appendix II.), or of the 
testimony supplied by the Coal-formations. In these respects, 
all were upon common ground of ignorance when the Mosaic 
Narrative was written, whoever may have been the Scribe, or 
whatever its date. The remarkable limitation of the average 
depth of the waters to about twenty-seven feet, and the state- 
ment that " all the high hills under the whole heaven were cov- 
ered," is a very conclusive internal proof of the Divine Bevela- 
tion of the Narrative. Our demonstration shows that the aver- 
age depth of twenty-seven feet of water was amply sufficient. 
But is it at all probable that the writer of the Narrative would 
have entered upon our calculation ? On the contrary, would he 
not have been as well aware of the improbability of his story as 
is now represented by Theoretical Geology, had he not obtained 
his information from a perfectly reliable authority? After the 
several thousand years since the statement was promulgated, 
Theoretical Geology reaches the conclusion that — 



676 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

"The mass of water necessary. to cover the whole globe to the 
depth supposed would be in thickness about five miles above 
the previous sea-level, and this quantity of water might be fairly 
calculated as amounting to eight times that of the seas and oceans 
of the globe, in addition to the quantity already existing. The 
questions then arise, whence was this water derived, and how 
was it disposed of after its purpose was answered ? These ques- 
tions may, indeed, be met by saying that the waters were created 
for the purpose, and then annihilated. But we are not at liberty 
thus* to invent miracles." — Eev. Dr. J. Pye Smith's Scripture 
and Geology. 

Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the Hocks, ridicules at great 
length the idea that Noah could have surveyed from the Ark 
the tops of "all the high hills under the whole heaven." But 
no such statement occurs in the Narrative ; and it is also remark- 
able that what is said as to the hills is only an incidental circum- 
stance, without any other apparent object than that of presenting 
an actual occurrence, but one of the least important contingencies 
of the Mood. Nor, probably, did the forty days' rain contribute 
at all to the requisite quantity of water, however much it may 
have aided in the destruction of life. It was only an incident 
of the breaking up of the great deep. While that was in prog- 
ress, the spray arising from the lashing of the waters over the 
dry land would have necessarily kept the atmosphere densely 
charged with vapors, attended, as a consequence, with an uni- 
versal avalanche of rain, as described in the expressive words, 
'.' The windows of heaven were opened." This has been a god- 
send to Theoretical Geology. "What!" says Geology, "create 
five miles' depth of water and empty it out of the heavens, and 
then be obliged to extinguish the enormous amount of eight 
times the present bulk of the seas and the oceans! Don't be- 
lieve it ! Science shows its absurdity !" 

But it is all left to the faith of mankind, without a word of 
explanation; foreseeing, also, that the adverse speculations in 
Geology would ultimately lead to a development of the explan- 
atory facts, and thus teach a lesson to Theoretical Geology that 
succinct statements in Eevelation are most becoming the Deity. 

As to the cause of the recession of the waters, we naturally 
infer, from the cause of their rise, that it consisted in the subsid- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. G77 

ence of the bed of the ocean. This accounts, also, for the greater 
violence and rapidity of their subsidence. than their rise, since 
in the latter case the water was lifted up, while in the other the 
same downward pressure increased in an incalculable degree the 
violence of their movement. 

With the various premises which have been now presented, 
and taking along what has been said in Appendix II. of the 
rise and recession of the waters of the Flood, we readily obtain 
a solution of all the other " enigmas" which are destined to % ren- 
der Theoretical Geology conspicuous in the annals of criticism. 
The appearance of fossiliferous tropical plants, or their impres- 
sions, in most if not all the Coal-fields, even those of high north- 
ern latitudes, and of the same species as occur in the Coal-fields 
of the tropical regions, is a natural consequence of the profuse 
vegetation in so vast a quarter of the globe. Nor does Theoret- 
ical Geology manifest a proper respect for "science" in assuming 
that they were the growth of all quarters of the earth, whatever 
temperature it may assign to northern latitudes, since every 
great region would have had its own peculiar species, according 
to the analogies which now prevail, to say nothing of the effects 
of those nights of three months' duration which enshroud the 
Coal-fields of Melville Island. Local torrents of water would 
have accumulated those, and those only, in the vicinity of the 
several Coal-fields respectively ; and Theoretical Geology admits 
that there has been no change in the vegetable world since the 
carboniferous era. Thus it is said by Sir Charles Lyell, that — 

" In regard to plants, we may consider those which character- 
ize the great carboniferous groups as the first deserving partic- 
ular attention. They are by no means confined to the simplest 
forms of vegetation, as to cryptogamous plants ; but, on the con- 
trary, belong to all the leading divisions of the vegetable kingdom." 
And thus Phillips, in his Geology — ■" Plants and animals of the 
carboniferous system are conformable with the existing types, 
and intelligible by them." And so, also, Bakewell. 

The following "enigma" interprets the universal diffusion of 
tropical plants in the Coal -formations. There exists near Co- 
logne " a great repository of coal, which extends for many 
leagues., and is covered by a bed of gravel from twelve to twenty 
feet deep. Trunks of trees deprived of their branches are imbed- 



678 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ded in this coal, which proves that they were transported from 
a distance." And how great the distance, and how recent the 
transportation, is shown by the fact that " nuts indigenous to Hin- 
dostan and China are also found in it 11 — Bakewell's Geology. 

And how can the hypothesis of local torrents of water stand, 
for a moment, an analysis of the Coal-fields which occupy but 
a few acres of the narrow limits of Ehode Island, where, accord- 
ing to a scientific and accurate observer, Dr. Wi. F= Channing, 
" Five hundred millions of tons is not too large an estimate of the 
quantity of the Ehode Island anthracite coal." 

Or, again, how will the geolpgical hypothesis dispose of the 
Coal-fields in that other small island, Great Britain, without re- 
sorting to assumptions that carry their own contradiction, but 
which the forests of Africa explain at once on our diluvian the- 
ory ? " The total thickness of the Derbyshire strata," for exam- 
ple, " including a part of Nottinghamshire, in which are thirty 
different beds of coal, is 3930 feet, of which seventy-eight con- 
sist of coal ;" and here is another more complex example in that 
same small island, in which the extent and thickness of the strata 
of coal can be explained only by the forests of Africa. Thus it 
is stated, in BakewelVs Geology, that — 

"It has been observed that. Coal-strata are bent in concavities 
resembling a trough or basin, dipping down on one side of the 
field and rising on the other " (the sides of the valleys). " In 
the great Coal-field in South Wales, which is rather a long trough 
than a basin, the strata are arranged in this manner over an ex- 
tent of nearly a hundred miles in length, and a variable breadth 
of from five to twenty miles. It contains twenty-three beds of 
workable coal. The thickest bed is nine feet. In some parts 
there are sixteen seams of iron-stone. The strata of this vast 
Coal-field are deeply cut through by valleys, and are much broken 
by faults." "It forms an extent of surface exceeding twelve 
hundred square miles ; and it is computed that it will yield six- 
ty-four million tons of coal per square mile," or an aggregate of 
76,800,000,000 tons, or at the rate of 20,000,000 tons annually 
for nearly four thousand years. 

The following are other illustrations of the same nature as the 
foregoing. It is stated that the " anthracite Coal-region of Penn- 
sylvania embraces four hundred and seventy square miles, and 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 679 

that the amount of anthracite coal yet in the earth (the area 
and thickness of the veins being accurately known) consists of 
26,343,675,000 tons. From this deduct one-half waste in min- 
ing, there will be left of marketable coal an amount yielding 
20,000,000 tons annually for six hundred years. 

"Statistics of bituminous coal show that within a circle of one 
hundred miles, of which Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, is the centre, 
there is enough bituminous coal in the earth to pay off the na- 
tional debts of all the governments of the world many times 
over. And it has been estimated from geological surveys, 
that this coal would pay the debt of the United States (near 
$2,500,000,000) fifty-four times, if its stupendous value could be 
realized at once " — a value amounting to $135,000,000,000. 

JSTor can there be desired a more satisfactory proof of pur di- 
luvian theory than what is supplied by the following quotation 
from Phillips's Geology (1855), relating to the supposed convul- 
sions of the Coal-formations. Thus : 

" This long period [of the Coal-formations] appears to have 
come suddenly to an end, and the regularity of its deposits to have 
been interrupted by a general eruption of disturbing forces, which 
have left traces of their power and extent in all the Coal-fields of 
Europe and America. As, after the deposit of the slates, violent 
dislocations happened, and were succeeded by the old red con- 
glomerate, so, after the deposit of coal, similar and equally exten- 
sive interruptions of the planes and courses of strata were fol- 
lowed by the analogous deposit of lower red sandstone." 
" Scarcely a mine or colliery is worked in strata of this era in 
any part of the ivorld which is not crossed by several dislocations of 
this nature; and it is always found that they divide and displace in 
the SAME DIRECTION the whole series of the strata to the greatest 
depths which man has reached. 1 '' "That these dislocations hap- 
pened after the complete deposit and induration of the Coal-strata is 
evident; that they followed almost immediately, and happened nearly 
at the SAME period OF time in all the coal tracts, appears certain 
from the general fact that the disturbances rarely extend into the 
newer strata of magnesian lime and red sandstone." 

I have marked in the foregoing quotation the particular cir- 
cumstances which most deserve consideration, especially the sup- 
posed universal disturbing force, resulting in upheavals, though 
limited to the Coal-fields; its occurrence at the particular mo- 






680 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

ment of the termination of the " carboniferous era," and the sud- 
den termination of the long period of the coal deposits. These 
universal coincidences are entirely beyond any interpretation but 
that which is supplied by a cause like the General Deluge, while 
the phenomena are exactly such as the Deluge should have occa- 
sioned. After what has been already said of the requirements 
of our diluvian theory, the reader can not fail of recognizing in 
the "dislocations" or supposed upheavals, forming the dikes, the 
remains of those hills which had arrested the flood-wood, and 
around which the vegetable material was deposited; the dykes 
being thus limited to the Coal-fields. But with all this should be 
associated the contradictions by geological facts which will have 
been stated, as well as the various other "enigmas" which Theo- 
retical Geology has delivered over to impossible causes. 

The grand "enigma" relative to the interposition of the va- 
rious mineral strata, including the fossils, and for the interpreta- 
tion of which Theoretical Geology violates the existing order of 
nature and the plainest facts, is clearly resolved by the neces- 
sary result of repeated collisions of immense forests against the 
hills of sand, ferruginous earth, clay, &c, which had been either 
thrown up from the bottom of the sea or of lakes, or accu- 
mulated where the land had not been submerged. The mode in 
which the waters rose upon the earth would, as we have seen, have 
established a wave-like movement, and the recession of the waves 
would have been greatly increased whenever the flood-wood en- 
countered the hills, and especially by any mountain-ranges in 
the distance. As soon, also, as the collisions took place, a part 
or the whole of the floating mass would have been deposited 
in the valleys; and then immediately the crumbling hills would 
have dashed down upon the vegetable mass and have been ex- 
tensively diffused over it by the agency of the waters. All this 
will be readily appreciated when it is considered that vast mount- 
ain slides are often occasioned by a rain of a week's duration.* 
The number, depth, and extent of the strata would depend upon 
the frequency and size of the hills, upon the force of each collis- 
ion, and upon the number of collisions that may have happened 
before the whole vegetable mass would have been arrested, or 

* In the case before us — "the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights''' 
— perhaps in part for this very purpose. 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. 681 

the hills more or less demolished. And so of the number, depth, 
&c., of the strata of coal. If the whole mass were deposited at 
once, then, of course, there would have been no interposition of 
mineral strata, but only the superincumbent. And who does 
not see in these solitary strata of coal, and the great thickness 
which they often present, a full contradiction of the hypothesis 
of slow formation, not only as contrasted with the numerous 
strata of other fields, but the absurdity of supposing that such 
a mass of vegetable matter could have been accumulated from 
the surrounding country by a single washing? for, had there been 
more than one, there should have been as many strata of coal 
and of the mineral substances. 

Again, another " enigma " in the isolated strata of leaves, which 
no imagination can refer to any other source than an immense 
forest of trees simultaneously deposited beneath by a vast body 
of water; and which in itself, when taken in connection with 
the universal Coal-fields, conclusively establishes the General 
Deluge. These leaves, as their existence alone demonstrates, 
were forcibly detached from great masses of trees, and floated 
along with the forest, but particularly separated when the col- 
lisions took place. This detachment of the leaves should have 
often happened, and they should, as they do, have often formed 
isolated strata, since, floating upon the surface of the water when 
the collisions took place, the trees were first deposited, and the 
great mass of descending mineral substance would have been 
precipitated upon the trees before the receding waves would 
have deposited the leaves; when any continued descent of the 
earthy matter would have either involved itself among the foli- 
age, or have formed a stratum above it. This is also exactly the 
variety which now meets our observation in Coal-fields widely 
separated from each other. 

And again, another "enigma," which, like the rest, Theoretical 
Geology regards as paradoxical, is the unbroken condition of the 
leaves, and of the large and delicate fronds of various species of 
fern ; and which, too, is equally as the foregoing conclusive in 
itself that no other cause than a General Deluge could have 
borne them so universally in this unmutilated state to their va- 
rious resting-places. This conclusion would be incontrovertible 
were the occurrence less generally apparent; but it must be- 



682 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

come undoubted with every unprejudiced mind in view of the 
universality of the fact. The phenomenon is represented in the 
following manner by Professor Silliman, in his Appendix to 
BakewelVs Geology: 

"Among the plants of the Coal-formation, situated sometimes 
hundreds and thousands of feet below the surface, and covered 
by many beds of solid rocks, their leaves, many of which are of 
the most tender and delicate structure, are often found fully ex- 
panded, in their natural position in regard to the rest of the plant, 
and laid out with as much precision as in the hortus siccus of a 
botanist. It is often true that the minutest parts do not appear to 
have suffered attrition or injury of any kind." 

Flowers, also, as well as the most delicate plants, which The- 
oretical Geology has erected into a collateral "science" of "enig- 
mas," have been thus transmitted to us from the antediluvian 
world through their incorporation with both the mineral and 
coal strata, receiving the significant title of the "fossil flora of 
the Coal-fields." And what a contrast is this with the hypoth- 
esis of Theoretical Geology, which, in its habitual disregard of 
physical impossibilities, refers, as we have seen, the vegetable 
accumulations to washings of the adjacent regions of country. 
Independently of the visionary nature of the assumption that an 
adequate supply of material could have been thus yielded, even 
for a single one of the thicker strata, and this, too, after each rak- 
ing of the country, according to the number of the strata, by 
torrents of water capable of uprooting and transporting forests, 
I need not farther point out the impossibility of the existence of 
the "fossil flora," "the beautiful fronds of ferns," &c, upon the 
geological premises, since every leaf, every flower, every delicate 
plant, would have been torn into fragments, and mingled with 
the general mass. Associated, also, with this are the great " enig- 
mas" relative to the torrents of water, their universality in re- 
spect to the Coal-fields, their limitation to those particular spots 
and to a level with the ocean, their contemporaneousness with 
the " carboniferous era," and their abrupt disappearance forever 
from the earth as soon as they had accomplished the work of the 
Coal-formations, and the greater "enigma," also, that they should 
have perpetuated such a memorial of a tropical growth of plants 
in the dark region of the frozen zone, and the sudden cessation 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FOKMATTONS. 683 

of this wonderful vegetation as soon as the Coal-fields were fin- 
ished off ; and outside of the tropics found only in Coal-fields. 

Still another so-called "enigma" presents itself in the perfectly 
distinct positions of the mineral and coal strata ; when, upon the 
geological hypothesis, these torrents of water should have hurled 
down rocks and earth, and mingled them in one mass of confu- 
sion with the vegetable material; and this, too, with the neces- 
sity of supposing that the land was desolated in vegetation, and 
divested of its soil and seeds, at each successive and most unac- 
countable flood of water. And yet it was at these desolated 
spots, and nowhere else, that not only the torrents continued to 
reappear, but vegetation to advance in its unwonted vigor. Ge- 
ology looks on in astonishment, and surmises that this violation 
of the order of nature was in anticipation of the appearance of 
man upon the globe. 

" The trees of the primeval forest," says the Eev. Dr. Buck- 
land, in his Bridgewater Treatise on Geology, " have not, like mod- 
em trees, undergone decay, yielding back their elements to the soil 
and atmosphere; but, treasured up in subterranean store-houses, 
have been transformed into enduring beds of coal, which in these 
latter ages have become to man the sources of heat, and light, and 
wealth" 

But why not "undergo decay like modern trees?" Theoret- 
ical Geology shows us nothing by which we may conceive of the 
abrupt cessation of the laws which had governed the vegetable 
kingdom antecedently to the Coal-formations, and their equally 
sudden and undisturbed restoration according to the laws orig- 
inally ordained, or of the marvellous torrents of water. And 
here Theoretical Geology, in respect to the causes which it as- 
signs for the Coal-formations, brings up a fact which completely 
overthrows its hypothesis in all its assumptions; for by no pos- 
sibility could the vegetation of its long "carboniferous era" have 
been maintained in the particular spots of the Coal-fields, unless 
the "primeval forests" had continued, during that supposed era 
of luxuriant growth, to " undergo decay like modern trees, and to 
yield bach their elements to the soil and atmosphere by which they 
had been nourished." The blunder is as great as that of placing 
the Coal-formations in long periods of darkness, or of providing 
for them an atmosphere of carbonic acid gas. 



684: PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

It is also remarkable that it has not occurred to Theoretical 
Geology that it places the "carboniferous era" at a period of 
time when it assumes that immense regions where the Coal-fields 
exist were at the bottom of the ocean ! " We are all brought," 
says Dr. Buckland, "into immediate connection with the veg- 
etation that clothed the earth before one half of its actual surface 
had yet been formed." [!] 

But let us grant to Theoretical Geology the requisite seeds and 
soil for every successive crop of vegetation, and it will be equally 
confuted upon this ground ; for it would necessarily imply the 
growth of new species of plants after every ploughing over of 
the earth, just as the burning of forests is succeeded by other 
species, or as the earth is now generally clad with a vegetation 
different from that of the "carboniferous era;" whereas the Coal- 
fields, from top to bottom, are everywhere composed, in a gen- 
eral sense, of the same species of plants. This is required by 
our diluvial theory ; and not only so, but a total absence of such 
a jumble of rocks, earth, and coal, as the supposed torrents of wa- 
ter would have occasioned ; and yet there should be an intimate 
intermixture of earthy matter with the coal arising from the tur- 
bid condition of the water, and the percolation through the veg- 
etable mass of earthy matter from the prostrated mineral strata. 
Occasionally, also, a denser mineral drift would have been likely 
to have become involved in masses of the vegetable substance, 
and to have been deposited with it. Such, too, are the realities; 
and had it been otherwise, it would have been indeed an " enig- 
ma." The cast-off blendings of earth and coal at the workings 
of the Coal-fields, and from our furnaces and grates, supply all 
the analytical proof that is wanted upon this subject. 

Let us now hear Theoretical Geology in its troubled deliber- 
ations over the strata of leaves, and the unmutilated state of 
delicate plants. Bakewell, who was thoroughly practical, and 
withal a thorough advocate of the long geological eras, including 
the long periods of darkness which distinguished the vegetation 
of the Mosaic Days, the " remodellings of the earth," "extinc- 
tions," " new creations," " submersions and upheavings " of the 
Coal-formations, &c, but otherwise a man of facts and candor, 
remarks, that — 

" Very thin seams of coal sometimes alternate with the shale 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. 685 

lying between two large beds of coal. I have on the table be- 
fore me a mass from the Dudley Coal-field, in which parts of two 
beds of coal are separated by a stratum of indurated clay or 
shale, about two inches in thickness. This stratum of shale con- 
tains more than twenty seams of coal, none of which exceed the 
thickness of a wafer, but they are distinctly separated from each 
other by seams of shale. These thin seams of coal and shale 
were probably formed of alternate depositions of leaves or minute 
aquatic plants and of earthy particles forming layers of clay or 
sand." 

Exactly so. The leaves or minute plants were borne upon 
the top of the wave, which, on its recession, deposited layers of 
this delicate foliage, one after another, in quick succession, by 
immediately subsequent undulations from the margin of the re- 
ceding wave (as often witnessed by the sea-side) ; and a constant 
draining down of clay or sand from the hill, as the ultimate ef- 
fect of the collision it had sustained, explains " the seams of in- 
durated clay or shale." In consideration of the exigencies of the 
case, Bakewell apostrophizes in the following manner . 

" These are circumstances which appear to me to prove that 
the formation of the Coal-strata was effected more rapidly than 
those Geologists have hitherto been willing to admit who have 
only examined Coal-mines seated in an easy-chair in their 

STUDIES." 

This is what I say. And what candid mind, knowing the 
habits and pursuits of the most zealous in Theoretical Geology, 
will doubt for a moment that all their promulgations have been 
made from "the Easy-Chair?" This explains, in a measure, 
not only the extraordinary nature of the assumptions in Theo- 
retical Geology, but the great instability of its hypotheses, and 
the frequent jarring of doctrines and opinions. Oar Author ar- 
gues, also, from irresistible facts, against his own hypothesis of 
slow formation by successive growths, torrents of water, and 
submersions and upheavals, when he encounters dense strata of 
sandstone in which delicate plants are imbedded. He finds it an 
"enigma" too abstruse for the geological hypothesis, and is co- 
erced almost to the conclusion of the dependence of such strata 
upon something like the General Deluge. Thus he says : 

" When we consider that these were the stems of hollow tu- 



686 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

bular plants, equisetums, without any woody support, it is im- 
possible to believe that they could have remained erect, in a warm 
temperature, without speedy destruction or decomposition, even 
for a very limited time. We are therefore certain that they 

WERE SPEEDILY ENCASED IN THE STRATA that UOW surround 

them ; or, in other words, that three strata of sandstone, nine feet 
in thickness, were rapidly deposited.", 

Our Author is, therefore, manfully inclined to the truth, and 
would have completely evoked it from its usual depth, had he 
carried his reasoning so far as to have unfolded the fact that the 
" tubular plants " would have been crushed at once by the geo- 
logical torrents of water while hurling down the accompanying 
sand, but which would have floated safely upon our accommo- 
dating flood, and have been as safely deposited in the midst of 
the sand, when the latter descended at each wave's collision. 
And it is farther admitted by our very able and practical Au- 
thor (who only made out his theories in '• the Easy-Chair "), 
that "A successive series of extremely thin strata of iron-stone 
and clay, which often contain perfect and delicate remains of plants 
and animals, proves that they were deposited in tranquil water " 
— while the top of our Flood, as it respects the safety of leaves 
and delicate plants, was equivalent to tranquil water. Nor may 
Theoretical Geology resort to its hypothesis that all the vegeta- 
ble material of the Coal-fields was deposited in the " tranquil 
waters" of bays, estuaries, and lakes, in emergencies like the 
foregoing, and neglect its assumption that it had been all ante- 
cedently subjected to torrents of water capable of overturning 
and sweeping down the dense forests that underwent, in some 
mysterious manner, deposition at the bottom of said tranquil 
waters. And here it should be considered that the leaves, ferns, 
flowers, &c, could have never subsided in this condition, but 
would have floated till overtaken by decay. And it is also evi- 
dent that the trees, however much " saturated with water," would 
have never sunk below a few feet from the surface. Any earthy 
matter that might have been afterwards precipitated would have 
at once sunk beneath the vegetable material. The Eev. Dr. 
Buckland has the following interpretation in his Bridgewater 
Treatise on Geology : 

" The most early stage to which we can carry back the origin 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 687 

of coal was among the swamps and forests of the primeval earth, 
where it flourished in the form of gigantic Calamites, &c. From 
their native bed these stately plants were torn away by the storms 
and inundations of a hot and humid climate, and transported to 
some adjacent lake, or estuary, or sea. Here they floated on the 
waters, until they sank saturated to the bottom, and, being buried 
in the detritus of adjacent lands, became transferred to a new es- 
tate among the members of the mineral kingdom. A long inter- 
ment followed. By the elevating force of subterranean 
fires these beds of coal have been uplifted from beneath the waters, 
where they are accessible to the industry of man." ! ! 

Another perplexing " enigma " may be brought into apposi- 
tion with the " tubular equiseta," and other " perfect and delicate 
remains of plants and animals," and the whole ''fossil flora," 
which consists of the trees that are often found in an upright or 
inclined position, penetrating through the whole mass of coal and 
mineral strata, by which it is demonstrated that the whole, vegetable 
and mineral, must have been deposited simultaneously. And yet 
are the coal and mineral substances in perfectly separate strata ; 
while the agencies of the geological hypothesis would have con- 
founded the whole into an indiscriminate mixture. 

"We now come upon an " enigma" of great embarrassment to 
the universal tropical temperature which was required to ex- 
pound the general presence of tropical plants in the Coal-forma- 
tions ; and this is the appearance of plants in the midst of the 
formations which are unknown in tropical climates, but such as 
are peculiar, at our regulated era, to the temperate zone. It 
need not be said that the two distinct groups must have been as- 
sembled from regions very distant from each other, and simul- 
taneously assembled. The coincidence proves also, in itself, the 
■universality of the Flood. And while thus adverting again to 
the assumed universal tropical heat, I may speak of the con- 
flict of this doctrine with the "typical system" as it relates to 
the animal kingdom. " The Science " begins with the lowest 
forms of organic life, and has reached the tribes of fishes and 
reptiles before it introduces the higher order of animals. Here, 
then, is the blunder. All the geological creations antecedent to 
the "carboniferous epoch" were of cold-blooded animals, when 
the supposed heat of the earth was too exalted for the warm- 



688 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

blooded. Nature protests against this caricature of her works ; 
since, if such had been the earth's temperature, or at any stage 
in the process of refrigeration, she would have been consistent 
enough to have first brought forth those warm-blooded animals 
to whom the higher temperature is more suitable, and have de- 
layed the cold-blooded to the last. But perhaps Theoretical Ge- 
ology may take refuge under what we have seen of the doctrine 
as expressed by Sir Charles Lyell, that " The coal-plants 
may have been endowed with a different constitution from plants 
now living, enabling them to bear a greater variation of circum- 
stances in regard to light," &c. And thus, in its efforts to ex- 
pound the existence of tropical plants in the Arctic Coal-fields, 
Theoretical Geology completely loses sight of the exigencies of 
animal life, and, in its usual manner, invents an hypothesis of 
stupendous import to dispose of a single " enigma," although 
contradicted by many surrounding facts. It is, however, a be- 
coming associate of the atmosphere of carbonic acid gas. 

• The question now before us was settled in the most direct 
manner by the discovery, long ago, of the remains of plants and 
animals of the highest organization in the lowest fossiliferous 
rocks ; while we have also seen that trees of the same species 
now growing in temperate regions have been found in the Coal- 
formations. But these are only examples of a multitude of facts 
which prove not only that there existed at the " carboniferous 
era" precisely the same diversity of climates as at the present 
day, but also that the fossil basis of Theoretical Geology is per- 
fectly worthless. (See Chapter XIII.) There can be no com- 
promise with a doctrine which disjoints the organization and 
physical conditions of the animals and plants whose remains are 
found in the lowest fossiliferous rocks from their analogies of 
the present day, and therefore with none which invents a differ- 
ent temperature and a different light from such as are adapted 
to all the present varieties of organic life. If Geologists would 
study physiology before laying the foundations of a " Science " 
which constantly involves the fundamental laws of the organic 
kingdoms, we should hear no more of an adaptation of plants 
and animals to different conditions of inorganic nature, according 
to the specifications already set forth. 

Let us now consider for a moment the consequences of the 



APPENDIX III.— THE C0AL-E0RMAT10NS. 689 

Geological solution of the "enigma" of the mineral strata, par- 
ticularly the calcareous, which abound in Coal-fields, and the 
greater "enigma" of the fossiliferous, and observe what absurd- 
ities the hypothesis involves. It supposes that there were as 
many "submersions beneath the ocean" and as many "upheav- 
als" as there are calcareous strata; while the other mineral 
strata are referred to torrents of water like those which swept 
down the vegetable materials, but without any intermingling of 
the former with the latter. It supposes, also, that all over the 
earth the "submersions" and "upheavals," like the torrents of 
water, were exactly limited to the spots where the Coal-fields 
exist, since the strata do not extend into the adjacent land, and 
that, like the torrents of water, they occurred simultaneously at 
the various spots; that the " upheavals" took place at the exact 
juncture of time when vegetation was in sufficient readiness to 
deposit material for the Coal-strata, and that when each of these 
strata of coal was duly prepared the "submersions" took place 
to obtain the requisite calcareous and fossiliferous strata, or tor- 
rents of water were instituted to hurl down the strata composed 
of sand, clay, &c, and before vegetation had again started on its 
career (leaving behind no vestiges of seeds or soil) ; that, also, 
in consideration of the necessity of dry land for the production 
of plants, as soon as the " upheavals" took place the seas receded 
to make room for other growths of the same identical plants, but 
returned in due time for the necessary "submersions;" and far- 
ther, that the " upheavals," however numerous, never raised the 
Coal-fields, during the process of their formation, above the level 
of the surrounding country, nor disturbed the adjacent lands; 
that in all this universal crash, upward and downward, there 
was no derangement of either the mineral or coal strata, but 
every thing was so methodically conducted by the great engines 
of nature that Theoretical Geology, as we have seen, discovers in 
the "carboniferous era," and in the uses of the coal and its ferru- 
ginous and calcareous strata, great evidences of a Providential 
design. 

But what, says Theoretical Geology, covered up all the Coal- 
fields, unless it have been many local torrents of water since 
their deposition ? I answer, that the problem might be explain- 
ed by referring the superincumbent earth to the same causes 

44 



690 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

that have entombed Nineveh, Babylon, &c. We have, however, 
in the recession of the flood an explanation abundantly ample — 
a cause which would have left its drift especially upon these lo- 
calities, since the elevated lands which had arrested the flood- 
wood would have contributed again to its inhumation on the re- 
flex movement. 

I now enter upon what may be regarded as the "pons asino- 
rum" of Theoretical Geology, which consists of two " enigmas V — 
the "dikes" and "breaks or faults" of the Coal-formations, and 
the " disappearance of broken and upheaved strata of coal." "A 
dike" says Bakewell, " is an elevation or wall of mineral matter, 
cutting through the strata in a position nearly vertical. Their 
thickness varies from a few inches to twenty or thirty feet, and 
even yards. A fault is a break or intersection of strata, by 
which they are commonly raised or thrown down; so that in 
working a bed of coal the miners come suddenly to its apparent 
termination." It will be seen, however, that the dikes and faidts 
are essentially the same thing, though the hypothesis by which 
they are expounded in Theoretical Geology renders them unin- 
telligibly different. " The disappearance of upheaved strata of 
coal" consists in "a mass of upraised strata of many hundred feet 
in thickness, having by some unknown cause been carried away, 
and entirely disappeared." — Bakewell's Geology. 

These dikes and faults are the most embarrassing problems in 
Theoretical Geology, but the absence of which would form an 
objection to our diluvian theory. They are also attended by 
some important incidents which our diluvial theory requires, 
and by which it is corroborated ; and these, therefore, must re- 
ceive a particular consideration. The phenomena, when explain- 
ed, will appear, like most other things that may be submitted to 
the ordeal of truth, to be perfectly simple. In the first place, 
then, the hills of which I have spoken as supplying the min- 
eral strata for the Coal-formations, should not have been al- 
ways wholly demolished ; since it will be readily seen that their 
central parts would have often consisted of indurated or rocky 
substances. Such was then, as now, the case ; and these central 
portions have had a large share in the geological philosophy of 
some of the " enigmas " which I have hitherto considered. " The 
dikes which intersect the Coal-strata are frequently composed of 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 691 

indurated clay, basalt, and greenstone." They also, as they should, 
"cut through the strata in a position nearly or altogether vertical." 
Now, Theoretical Geology supposes that these dikes were 
" upheaved " after the coal had become matured ; and a sugges- 
tion may as well, therefore, be made, before proceeding to our 
analysis, which must have the effect of overthrowing the whole 
geological fabric of the Coal-formations, and of confirming our 
diluvian theory. It is simply this : These apparent intrusions 
abound in Coal-fields, and rarely, if ever, appear above the level 
of the surface ! They are necessarily supposed to have been of 
volcanic origin ; and therefore it is that their uniform depression 
to a level with the surface, generally covered by the coal, is so 
suggestive both as to the geological and the diluvian doctrines. 
To suppose that such a general phenomenon could have arisen 
from volcanic action without disturbing the surface of the Coal- 
fields, is, like the repeated "submersions" and " upheavals" of the 
entire fields without deranging their structure or raising them above 
the common level, to suppose the most absolute impossibilities.* 

* Bakewell supplies a summary statement of " The principal geological facts re- 
lating, to the Coal-formations," among which are the following : 

" The Coal-strata, after their deposition in inland lakes or estuaries, subsided and 
were submerged in the ocean, and were covered in many parts by marine strata, 
particularly by the magnesian limestone." "The faults and dikes that dislocate the 
Coal-strata were, in some instances, formed before the deposition of the upper ma- 
rine strata ; other faults were formed at a subsequent epoch, after the deposition of 
the marine strata. But in both cases it may be inferred that the strata were beneath 
the sea when the dislocation by faults (or dikes) took place. At a later period, the 
Coal-strata and the upper marine limestone by which they are in some parts covered 
were raised above the sea, and form a portion of the present land." "That the 
strata of the Coal-formation have been submerged under the ocean is completely es- 
tablished." [!] — Bake well's Geology. 

The Rev. Dr. Buckland says, in his Bridgewater Geology, that "By the ele- 
vating FORCE OF SUBTERRANEAN FIRES THE BEDS OF COAL HAVE BEEN UPLIFTED 

from beneath the waters, where they are accessible to the industry of man;" 
which is regarded as a very Providential design. 

Sir Charles Ltell supposes that where "the marine mountain-limestone alter- 
nates with strata of coal, the arrangement of the beds may possibly have been pro- 
duced by the alternate rising and sinking of large tracts, which were first 
laid dry, and then submerged again." 

And thus the Rev. Dr. McCosh, in his Typical Forms in Creation (1856) — "By 
various and gigantic appliances of subterranean forces the original deposits of coal 
have been broken up, changed in position, and brought nearer the surface, and thus 
placed within the reach of man. Upheavings have followed the throes of Mother 
Earth," &c. 



692 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

But before proceeding farther with the "pons," it may be well 
to say that Theoretical Geology places the "carboniferous era" 
at a period of time long antecedent to many of its alternate up- 
heavings and submersions of all parts of the globe, and observe 
how oblivious of these convulsions is Theoretical Geology when 
it approaches the Coal-formations, and how completely these for- 
mations contradict, by a single fact, the whole immense system 
of geological revolutions. Why then, I say, have not the Coal- 
fields shared the fate of the numerous shocks which are said to 
have shattered again and again the " crust of our planet ?" These 
fields are distributed over its surface, and they still remain just 
as they were deposited, undisturbed, and on a near level with 
the ocean. 

If we now interrogate the special circumstances attending the 
dikes, or faults, and breaks of the Coal-fields, we shall find every 
individual fact proclaiming the same conclusions. I shall pre- 
sent these critical tests in the language of an eminent advocate 
of the geological hypothesis, and of great familiarity with the 
Coal-formations. Thus — 

"In some Coal-fields the strata are raised or thrown down on 
one side of a dike one hundred and fifty yards or more; and 
the miner, instead of finding coal again, meets with beds of stone 
or clay on the other side. Hence he is frequently at a loss to 
proceed in searching for the coal which is thus cut off. If the 
stratum of stone be the same as any of the strata that were cut 
through in making the shaft, it proves that the bed of coal on 
the other side of the fault is thrown down, and he can determine 
the exact distance between the stratum and the coal he is in search 
of." — Bake well's Geology. 

Now, every statement in the foregoing extract will be seen to 
contradict the agencies in the hypothesis of slow formation. 
Upon our diluvian theory, these dikes, which existed in the form 
of hills at the time of the Flood, should have resisted the force 
of the impinging forest, while they should have been, according 
to the fact, denuded of their more yielding investing matter. 
The collisions should also have had the effect of breaking off the 
summits of the dikes, or other adjacent stones, and these should 
have appeared, just where Geology finds them, on the side of 
the dike opposite to that where the collisions took place. Or, if 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 693 

Theoretical Geology continues to think otherwise, I would then 
inquire as to the origin of these stones. Will it assume, as it 
otherwise must, that they were deposited in fragments from the 
ocean when the Coal-fields underwent their supposed submer- 
sions ? In the mean time, the flood-wood should have been piled 
up on that side where its force was expended, so as to have pre- 
sented the appearance of having been " raised, or thrown down ;" 
and this should have often happened with so much precision as 
to enable "the miner to determine the exact distance between that 
stratum and the coal he is in search of." Nor is there any other 
imaginable solution of such a general precision of this apparently 
most incongruous combination of phenomena than that which is 
here afforded, and which was certain to bring about these exact 
results in the localities where they appear. 

Again : it is another critical test of the opposing theories, that 
at other times the coal, in geological phraseology, is " raised or 
thrown down on both sides of a dike." In these cases, as in the 
preceding, it is imagined that the dike, at its supposed upheaval, 
carried up the incumbent strata of coal ; but it is not a little re- 
markable that this inclined appearance of coal upon both sides 
of a dike in some cases, in connection with the absence of coal 
upon one of the sides in other instances, had not given a totally 
different direction to Theoretical Geology in its groping after 
causes. The presence of coal upon both sides of a dike, as an 
abstract fact, undoubtedly would appear like an " upheaval " to 
all who look no farther than the fact itself; as in the matter of 
"a universal tropical temperature," "the glacial theory," &c. 
But not so with dikes which have inclined beds of coal on one 
side and a pile of stones on the other. They stand, apparently, 
in contradiction to each other ; and yet it will readily appear 
that a common cause has brought them into this condition. We 
have just seen how the deluge operated in giving rise to the dis- 
jointed strata and the substitution of rocks for the absent por- 
tion ; and doubtless the reader has anticipated us in discovering 
that the other phenomenon was brought about in two ways. 
First, that, where the hills were small (and the dikes are some- 
times quite thin), the flood-wood made its invasions upon both 
sides, and in this manner was piled up upon both ; and, sec- 
ondly, and far more frequently, that, where the hills were large, 



694 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the attrition was chiefly upon one side, and the flood-wood was 
driven over the top of the dike upon the other. It is also 
stated in Theoretical Geology, that — 

"It is remarkable that the beds of the coal-measures upon one 
side of these dikes are almost always higher than on the other side. 
Hence these dikes are often called troubles, on account of the 
great trouble which they give the miners to discover the bed of 
coal upon the other side of a dike which they had dug out, on 
the side at which they were working, as far as the dike itself." — 
Prof. Th. Thomson's Geology and Mineralogy. 

This is bringing the matter to a great degree of precision ; 
since it is obvious that the coal should be higher upon that side 
of the dike where the collision took place than upon the side 
where the vegetable mass had merely tumbled over ; or, as The- 
oretical Geology has it, " thrown down." This greater elevation 
of coal upon one side of a dike than upon the other being very 
general, and the substitution of rocks for coal in other instances 
upon one side of a dike, shows that the collisions were often lim- 
ited to one side only. The reader's attention should be directed 
especially to this unique and almost universal phenomenon, as 
being a very conclusive proof against the geological hypothesis 
of volcanic upheaval subsequent to the formation of the Coal- 
fields, since it proves, particularly in connection with the uni- 
versal limitation of the disturbance of the Coal-strata to the pre- 
cise places of these dikes, that a very different, exact, and com- 
mon cause has operated in all the cases. 

Certain varieties occur, also, in respect to the disposition of 
the dikes, which are expounded at once by our diluvian the- 
ory, but which greatly aggravate the hypothesis in Theoretical 
Geology. That is to say, for example, the "dikes sometimes 
cut the strata in the line of the dip, and sometimes in that of the 
line of bearing, and frequently in lines diagonal to both the dip and 
bearing of the strata, crossing the Coal-fields in various directions 
and intersecting each other." Such are exactly the varieties 
which should arise from the different relative positions of those 
hills whose central parts were not demolished, and which con- 
stitute the dikes ; and this especially where several hills were in 
proximity to each other. The natural effect of the indurated 
central portion of the congregated hills would have been that of 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. 695 

producing an appearance of a very broken condition of the 
strata; since the flood-wood was detained by all these hills till 
they were denuded of their loose covering, and the intervening 
valleys filled with the vegetable material, partially piled up upon 
the sides of the dikes. Hence the appearance is compared to 
" the. lines and intersections produced by the disruption of a sheet of 
ice. 11 And yet Theoretical Geology, through its most practical 
observers, imagines that this extensive net- work of basalt or oth- 
er indurated matter was thrown up subsequently to the forma- 
tion of the Coal-fields by violent volcanic action, although the 
surface of these fields never appears disturbed, nor do the 
"dikes" appear above the surface, though their tops are some- 
times visible on the level. But lest it be imagined that this is 
more of a caricature than a fair representation of the subject, I 
shall show that it falls short of the reality. Moreover, it is im- 
portant to the natural simplicity of our diluvian theory that it 
should be fully understood to what extent Theoretical Geology 
is obliged to convulse the Coal-fields by "upheavals of dikes" 
without disturbing the surface, or appearing above the level. 
Thus: 

"Faults," says Bakewell, "filled with basalt [or dikes] inter- 
sect all Coal-formations ; and, from the extreme hardness of the 
stone, they may often be traced ON THE SURFACE where they cut 
through secondary strata, and thus furnish certain evidence of 
their occurrence. Faults filled with clay or fragments [simply 
'dikes'], that have produced vast dislocations, often present no 
visible proofs of their existence, except what may be discovered by 
penetrating the surface." "Faults [or dikes], where their occur- 
rence can be examined and fully ascertained, are manifestations 
of the extraordinary and VIOLENT action of internal causes, that 
can not be mistaken by the Geologist. They afford him certain 
evidence of former terrestrial convulsions, as if he saw the earth 
opening and upheaving before his eyes' 11 but never rising above 
the surface or disturbing the strata of coal excepting in the ex- 
act places of the dikes. Indeed, our Author says that, "I know 
of no instance that has fallen under my own observation in any 
part of England and Wales where the upraised strata in a Coal- 
field are to be traced on the surface 11 

Our diluvian theory requires, also, the test of instances in 



696 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

which there should be the appearance of the supposed upraised 
strata of coal being " carried away ;" an " enigma " at which The- 
oretical Geology apostrophizes after the following manner : 

"However great" it says (Bakewell being still the interpreter), 
" may be the uprise or the downcast (terms exactly suited to our 
diluvian theory) of the strata on one side of a dike, no indication 
of any disturbance is visible on the surface. A mass of upraised 
strata of many hundred feet in thickness has, by some unknown 
cause, been carried away, and has entirely disappeared. The fact 
is general, and can not be explained except by a general 

CAUSE.' 7 

Before proceeding to an explanation of this critical test of our 
diluvial theory, it should be understood that the geological hy- 
pothesis supposes that in these cases particular sections of a Coal- 
field had been elevated to variable heights above " the main bed 
of coal," and that, according to these supposed elevations, the 
strata should have been raised to a corresponding height above 
the surface. Thus, in an example presented by Bakewell — 

" The main bed of coal is supposed to lie at the depth of nine 
hundred feet from the surface, and covered with strata of sand- 
stone and shale ; that in one section this main bed is raised to 
within two hundred feet of the surface, and the mineral strata 
above are entirely wanting; that in another section the main 
coal is seven hundred feet from the surface, and a mineral stra- 
tum is found again over the coal. In another section the main 
coal is within two hundred and fifty feet of the surface, and only 
a part of a mineral stratum occurs. In the section where the 
strata of coal have been elevated seven hundred feet, ive might 
expect to see a corresponding elevation of the ground, and that the 
whole series of strata would form a hill of seven hundred feet in 

height; whereas THE SURFACE OF THE GROUND PRESENTS NO IN- 
DICATION OF ANY DISLOCATION OR UPHEAVING OF THE BEDS," 

being in that respect the same as in all other cases of dikes, or 
faults. 

Mr. Farey, in speaking of the same phenomenon in his work 
on the Derbyshire Coal-fields, says: " I proceed to notice one of the 
most curious and important phenomena which the earth' 's surface 
presents — namely, that, though the strata are, as it were, tossed and 
turned and turned about in all degrees, of the several cases men- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIONS. C97 

tioned, as miners and colliers in particular can testify, yet that it 
is extremely rare to find a lifted edge or corner of strata STANDING 
UP ABOVE THE general SURFACE, or occasioning a precipice or 

cliff" 

Although the foregoing is regarded as " the most surprising 

fact that geology presents," it will be seen that it is what our 
diluvian theory demands, in all the details of the phenomenon, 
as indispensable to its integrity. Nevertheless, Theoretical Ge- 
ology does not give it up, but proceeds in its usual manner to 
violate all the attendant probabilities : 

"An effect," says Bakewell, "so extensive as the entire disap- 
pearance of the broken and upraised strata, in all our coal dis- 
tricts that have hitherto been examined, could not be caused by 
local inundations sweeping over the surface of the land ; for it 
may be asked, why should such inundations select for their the- 
atre of action all the coal districts in Scotland, England, and 
Wales ? Nor will a General Deluge explain the disappearance of 
the upraised strata, because it can be proved that the strata were 
brohen and raised by dikes or faults at different and remote peri- 
ods. [!] A succession of general deluges would therefore be re- 
quired ; one, for instance, before the deposition of marine lime- 
stone that covered the Coal-strata after their upraised beds had 
been removed, and another deluge would be required to carry 
away the strata raised by faults at a later epoch, after all the 
marine beds had been deposited." 

Here, therefore, too many deluges are required, and their " the- 
atre of action too select," even for Theoretical Geology ; and so, 
proceeding upon its architectural arrangement of the strata of 
marine limestone and of the mineral detritus, and its fundament- 
al fallacy of " submersions " and " upheavals," it goes on to dis- 
pose of the " pons " according to those premises. Thus — 

"To conclude — the disappearance of all the strata upraised 
by dikes, or faults, in every known coal district, can, I believe, be 
best explained by admitting the causes I have assigned; first, 
the soft and yielding condition of the submerged strata, that had 
never been indurated by drainage ; and secondty, the violent ac- 
tion of water upon them, when they were suddenly broken and 
forced upward, but were still beneath the surface of the ocean." 

He thinks, however, that "the mountains and mountain-ranges 



698 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

[among our important barriers to the flood] that occur beyond 
the limits of coal districts may at first appear to oppose what 
has been stated respecting the disappearance of the upraised 
Coal-strata." — Bakewell's Geology. 

Here, then, as everywhere else, we see it strongly exemplified 
that, where hypothesis lays its foundation in error for the inter- 
pretation of a complicated system of facts, every movement is a 
blunder. In the case before us, as in all other instances, Theo- 
retical Geology imagines that the dikes had been thrown up af- 
ter the formation of the Coal-fields, and therefore infers that they 
should have been overlaid, as in other cases, by coal and mineral 
strata; and since it revolts at the supposition that "local inunda- 
tions should have selected for their theatre of action all the coal 
districts of Scotland, England, and Wales " (notwithstanding its 
assumption of exactly such "local inundations" for the purpose 
of accumulating the vegetable matter), it avails itself of the sea 
to expound the disappearance of what had never an existence! 
And yet is this assumption, however absurd, the only one by 
which the hypothesis can dispose of the "enigma." 

But our diluvian theory resolves this paradox in a single sen- 
tence, and in exact conformity with every other phenomenon of 
the Coal-formations. It declares that an absence of the coal or 
mineral strata is a necessary fact, for the simple reason that they 
were never there. It says that there would have often happened 
an overshot of the vegetable mass in these cases of dikes ; since 
the earthy matter investing the dikes that was capable of being 
broken down would probably have been often exhausted before 
the basins were filled; and that in the other cases there was 
equally a want of earthy matter to detain the flood-wood, and 
therefore, in the failure of material for mineral strata, and an ad- 
equate resistance, the vegetable mass would have moved forward 
till it encountered other neighboring hills, and would have thus 
left the " disappearance of strata" which has so long embarrassed 
Theoretical Geology; or, carried yet farther onward upon the 
accumulating waters as they encountered the "mountains and 
mountain-ranges that occur beyond the limits of the coal dis- 
tricts," the mass would have taken a backward course as the 
wave receded, and have been thus maintained in those positions 
which are within " the limits of the coal districts." 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL FORMATIONS. 699 

Another very critical test of the supposed "upheavals" re- 
mains to be noticed in connection with the basaltic dikes, namely 
the absence of all marks of heat in bituminous Coal-fields, upon 
those portions of coal which lie in contact with these supposed 
molten dikes; although it has been said that the adjacent coal 
has sometimes presented the appearance of having been acted 
upon by heat. But this is only so in the rare localities which 
have been manifestly elevated by volcanic action subsequently 
to the formation of a Coal-field, as in the elevated anthracite 
mines of Pennsylvania. In these localities the bituminous mat- 
ter has been driven off by the agency of heat, and the coal thus 
converted into anthracite; which shows the effect of volcanic 
action upon Coal-fields, and, in its turn, completely disproves 
the geological hypothesis relative to the basaltic dikes in all the 
bituminous localities. A good exemplification of basaltic heat, 
and to which I have already referred (Appendices I. and II.), is 
to be seen over an extent of several miles at the trappean Pali- 
sades of New Jersey, which skirt the Hudson Eiver, and which 
have been thrown up to an elevation of several hundred feet 
through an aqueous deposit of a granular substance composed of 
feldspar, quartz, &c, varying in thickness from ten to twenty 
feet, and where this material in contact with the trap has been 
converted by the heat into a solid rock over an extent of a few 
inches to three or more feet, but particularly so in basaltic por- 
tions, as in the region of Weehawken. 

Finally, it is an "enigma" in Theoretical Geology that so few 
others than the fossils of aquatic animals should have been dis- 
covered in the Coal-formations. It was originally an assumption 
that no others existed at the "carboniferous era," and their as- 
sumed absence from the Coal-fields was one of the principal rea- 
sons for locating that era far back in the geological eternity. 
But fatal exceptions, as we have seen, have subsequently come 
forward in the fossil remains of terrestrial animals of a high or- 
ganization, both in Coal-fields and in mineral strata of an ante- 
rior date, and such as have their exact analogies at the present 
day. Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the Bocks (1856), speaks 
thus of the existence of " large reptiles:" " These reptiles of the 
carboniferous era, though only a few twelve-months ago we little 
suspected the fact, seem to have been not very rare in our own 



700 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

neighborhood." " Little more than a mile from where the Duke 
of Buccleuch's palace now stands, large reptiles had congregated 
in considerable numbers shortly after the great eight-feet coal- 
seam of the Dalkeith basin had been formed." 

Sir Charles Lyell remarks, in his Antiquity of Man (1863), 
that "For no less than thirty-four years it has been a received 
opinion in palaeontology that reptiles had never existed before 
the permian or magnesian limestone period, when at length, in 
1844, this supposed barrier was thrown down, and carboniferous rep- 
tiles^ terrestrial and^ aquatic, of several genera, were brought to 
light." In his Principles of Geology he states that " We find in 
the eocine, or oldest strata of the tertiary group, the remains of 
a great assemblage of the highest or mammiferous class, all of extinct 
species." 

Other examples of similar fossil remains anterior to the " car- 
boniferous era " have been presented, in conformity with geolog- 
ical estimates. Nevertheless, the occurrence of such fossils in 
the Coal-formations should be extremely rare upon our theory 
of the General Deluge, and this rarity our theory claims in its 
own behalf. Had it been otherwise, indeed, or had the fossils of 
the higher orders of animals been often found beneath the dilu- 
vial drift, it would not be explained by the General Flood. Our 
theory claims their general absence in consideration of the com- 
parative rarity of man and terrestrial animals, of their wide- 
spread diffusion upon the surface of the waters at the time of the 
Flood, and of their very perishable nature when thus exposed to 
destructive agencies. ISTor were they likely to have been often 
entangled in the flood-wood of the Coal-formations, but their 
bones must be looked for on the surface of the ground. On the 
contrary, however, the local torrents of Theoretical Geology 
should have carried down a large assemblage of mammiferous 
animals in every coal-field of the temperate regions. Such an- 
imals have, indeed, been occasionally found, along with certain 
existing plants, the modern aspect of which is a very trouble- 
some circumstance to Theoretical Geology. It therefore invents 
a second carboniferous era to meet these special exigencies, and 
bestows upon these particular fields a name which belongs 
equally to every coal-field, after the following manner : 

"The formations of wood-coal" says Bakewell, "are of far 



APPENDIX HI.— TEE COAJL-FOEMATIOXS. 701 

more recent date than of common coal, though their origin must 
be referred to a former condition of the globe, when animals Wee 
those existing at present in tropical climates flourished in Northern 
latitudes, as their remains sometimes occur in the wood-coal of 
Europe ;" while Lyell supposes that the plants of all the Coal- 
fields :i may have been endowed with a different constitution [from 
those now existing], enabling them to bear a greater variation of 
circumstances." 

Not will the reader fail to associate the foregoing facts with 
what we have seen of fossilized animals of high organization in 
the Coal-fields of an admitted earliest date, and the trees in the 
Glasgow quarries and Newcastle Coal-fields, which are similar 
to others now flourishing around those formations, and the nuts 
"found in the great repository of coal near Cologne,*' and which 
are the production of trees now growing in Hindostan and 
China. But what especially shows that all these incongruous 
speculations, to resolve the ' : enigmas n of the nuts and the ani- 
mals, have emanated from the "Easy-Chair,"' are contradictory 
statements made by the same authors. The following example 
is of that nature, and alone demolishes the whole fabric of the 
geological hypothesis of the Coal-formations. Here, it will be 
seen, are the bones of an animal of the highest order, not only in 
organization but in stature, imbedded in one of the oldest, or so- 
called mineral coal-fields. Thus our Author, Bakewell — 

"A still more remarkable formation occurs at Alpnach, in 
Switzerland, where a bed of coal is found at the depth of two 
hundred and eighty feet from the surface. Over the coal there 
is a stratum of bituminous limestone containing fluviatile shells, 
and bones and teeth of large mammalia, particularly the teeth of 
a species of mastodon. Notwithstanding the occurrence of the 
bones of large land quadrupeds in the stratum over the coal, the 
coal approaches in character nearly the mineral coal, and the 
ta of micaceous sandstone and shale above it have a .... 
-esemblance to those in our English Coal-fields:" 1 

In the same manner in which I have endeavored to expound 
the general absence of quadrupeds from the Coal - formations, 
may be explained, in part, the infrequency of their occurrence 
in the lowest fossiliferous rocks. Although such as may have 
floated upon the diluvial waters would have speedily undergone 



702 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

the usual decomposition, this objection does not apply to the 
bony fabric. Antecedently to the Flood, more local causes 
overpowered them in some localities, and entombed them in 
the now consolidated drift. Nevertheless, such was the nature 
of the General Deluge, that it would have buried in the super- 
ficial drift no small number of quadrupeds, the least perishable 
of whom, especially the bones of an elephantine size, would be 
likely to have escaped entire decomposition to the present day, 
though not for a geological age. Such is the fact, and sur- 
rounded by circumstances corroborative of the Noachian Flood. 
" The skeletons," as we read, "of terrestrial quadrupeds and oth- 
er mammalia are found almost universally diffused over the sur- 
face of the globe, imbedded in diluvial clay or gravel, and insin- 
uated into caves and fissures of rocks. These animals consist 
of extinct species and genera mingled with several species at pres- 
ent in existence. The mammoth, hyena, rhinoceros, and other an- 
imals of warm climates, strew the plains of the temperate and frig- 
id regions, as well as those of the torrid zone; while those of the 
hippopotamus, an animal at present confined to the rivers of Af- 
rica, are found in Europe and India, and marsupial animals, now 
cnly found in New Holland and South America, are recognized 
among the fossils of Europe. This diluvial matter, more or less 
charged with the relics of terrestrial animals, is found in every 
region strewed over the uppermost stratum of whatever series the 
stratum may he." Other citations of the same nature have been 
made in Appendix II. 

The abundance of these remains denotes that multiplication 
of the animal tribes at an early era which is implied by the Nar- 
rative of Creation ; while the absence of similar vestiges of man in- 
dicates a more limited extent of the human race. And this leads 
me to some farther remarks upon the absence of the remains of 
man and mammalia in the Coal-formations. In the first place, 
very extravagant estimates have been made of the antediluvian 
population. Whiston, in his "Theory of the Earth," places it 
at 500,000,000,000, or, as he says, "ten times as many as the 
present earth can well be supposed capable of maintaining in its 
present constitution since the Deluge." Burnet, in his "The- 
ory of the Earth," considers 10,000,000,000 an extravagant es- 
timate, being a difference from Whiston's of 490,000,000,000. 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 703 

But Theoretical Greology may here, as everywhere else, be easily 
rectified by referring to the Word of Inspiration. There we are 
informed that, when the Flood was ordained, "Men began to 
multiply (not had multiplied) on the face, of the earth ;" an ex- 
pression which,- it can not be mistaken, is intended to imply that 
the population was not then large, and should be associated with 
our other internal proof of the Inspiration of the Narratives of 
Creation and the Flood. This is also conformable to the numer- 
ical progress of the human race during even the last few hundred 
years; and I may add, that both considerations in connection 
form a substantial ground for the conclusion that the earth was 
densely covered with vegetation. This brings into view an im- 
portant proof that may be derived from the inhumation of that 
vegetation in the Coal-formations, and which has the remarkable 
attributes of showing that the earth was only sparsely inhabited 
before the Flood, and that the human race is of recent origin. 
In the former case, had the population been as large as at the 
present day, the Coal-formations in Europe and America would 
attest the fact. In the latter case, it is equally certain that man- 
kind would have overrun the earth, Europe especially, had the 
race existed ten thousand years before the time of Moses, and 
the Coal-fields would have been as necessary to them as to us. 
(See Chapter XII., on the Antiquity of Man.) But this bountiful 
provision, which Theoretical Greology, to relieve its speculations, 
regards as a matter of "design," has been only in recent times 
applied to the most important wants and uses of mankind. Con- 
sidering, therefore, that the constitution of the human mind has 
been always the same, and looking at its progress, and the march 
of improvements and of population since man began to record 
his observations, and the absence of monumental records of the 
race of a higher antiquity than those of Babylon, Nineveh, and 
Egypt, how absurd does the speculation appear of the existence 
of man even for twenty thousand years ! (Chapter XII.) 

The foregoing considerations enable us to understand still far- 
ther the reason why we may not expect to meet often with the 
remains of man or of the mammalia in the Coal-formations, or in 
any other. Whatever may be the estimated number of man- 
kind at the time of the Deluge, it will not affect our question ; 
since their remains have not been found in the diluvial mineral 



704 PHYSIOLOGY OE THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

drift, which is incomparably more extensive than the Coal-fields. 
This is also what we may continue to expect, since it would have 
been the effect of the Deluge to have dispersed them in all di- 
rections, and as well over the seas as the dry land. As the 
earth's surface consists of 196,000,000 square miles, two-thirds 
of which are water, it is evident that there is no probability that 
more than a very few individuals, at most, would have been con- 
veyed to the exact spots of the Coal-formations; and this con- 
sideration holds true of all land animals, although not to the 
same extent as of man and the domestic animals. 

Should the remains of man be discovered in the proper fossil- 
iferous rocks outside of the Coal-formations, there can be little 
doubt of his having been entombed before the Flood. But this 
would not be likely to have happened unless when suddenly 
overtaken by avalanches of water or of earth, or through other 
unusual casualties ; since it can not be doubted that man was as 
vigilant of his safety in the antediluvian as in the post-diluvian 
world. But if we allow the improbable number of fifty to have 
been entombed before the Flood in Asia, whose area is about 
16,000,000 square miles, and that the individuals were equally 
distributed, it will be necessary to dig over the earth, and exam- 
ine the rocks in every part of a section of more than 300,000 
square miles before we might meet with the remains of an in- 
dividual. This gives us some apprehension of what is to be ac- 
complished in geology before it can pronounce even upon a gen- 
eral absence of the remains of existing races of land animals in 
the fossiliferous rocks ; for it may be safely said that its explo- 
rations are no greater than the ratio of a few pin-holes to the en- 
tire surface of a globe of a mile or more in diameter. And when 
it is considered that the area of the seas is about two-thirds 
greater than that of dry land, it is manifestly impossible to de- 
termine the extinction of any aquatic animals. This, indeed, is 
remarkably confirmed by the late deep-sea explorations by the 
British "Lightning" and "Porcupine" expeditions, as already 
related (p. 449). 

In regard to the " extinction " of plants and animals, I have 
hitherto controverted Theoretical Geology upon its own ground 
of a gradual process. But the discussion has related mostly to 
those which became extinct, by universal admission, antecedent- 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-FORMATIONS. 705 

ly to the reputed time of the General Deluge. I now come to 
another and very different view of the subject, derived particu- 
larly from the extinct plants which contributed to the Coal-for- 
mations. We have seen that the geological hypothesis of the 
slow formation of the Coal-fields necessarily fails from a great 
variety of insuperable difficulties ; among which is the very im- 
portant one of a greatly inadequate supply of vegetable mate- 
rial. This would have arisen not only from the deficiency of 
land in the regions of the Coal-fields, but particularly from the 
complete eradication of seeds from the soil by the very first of 
the supposed torrents of water. But by no means so with the 
Noachian Flood ; and the proof which I am about to offer will 
make another very serious invasion upon the geological hypoth- 
esis of the Coal-formations. 

1st. That numerous species and genera of plants were sud- 
denly extinguished at the "carboniferous era" is conceded by 
all. Indeed, only a very few survivors have as yet been de- 
tected. The same species, also, occur in all the Coal-fields, and 
from top to bottom they are the same. Such, at least, is the 
general, if not the universal fact. Now, does not each one of 
these facts prove the dependence of the Coal-fields upon a sudden 
and universal Flood? If Geology still insists upon a universal 
tropical temperature, all the local torrents of water that may be 
invented will not begin to expound the general disappearance 
from all the face of the earth of that variety of plants which make 
up the Coal-fields, and at that exact juncture of time ; but none 
extinguished till the fields were completed, when all but a few 
of the old stock vanished forever. Admitting, however, their 
extinction by local torrents in the vicinity of the Coal-fields ac- 
cording to the geological premises, what was it, I ask, that ex- 
tinguished them in all other parts of the earth which were not 
molested by the supposed torrents ? 

2d. How did the earth become clothed with a different vege- 
tation subsequently to the "carboniferous era?" There is no 
other possible solution of this "enigma" than the General Del- 
uge, without adopting one of the alternatives of Theoretical Ge- 
ology — either "a renewed operation of the organic law of crea- 
tion " or a new " parturient effort of the earth." But our dilu- 
vian theory not only interprets the phenomenon in the most con- 

45 



706 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT. 

sistent manner, but both the general extinction of the old vege- 
tation and the growth of other species are indispensable to the 
theory. This is determined in our own experience. Nothing is 
more familiar to our observation than that when a forest has 
been felled, burnt over, and neglected, it is succeeded by species 
of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, entirely different from 
the preceding ; and although there is not a new species among 
them, many of the same may not be found within a distance of 
fifty or a hundred miles. The seeds of these plants had de- 
scended from an ancient stock, and had been safely entombed in 
the earth probably for centuries. Nature has been often detected 
in this act of preservation at a depth of many feet below the sur- 
face, especially in morasses. The fire had destroyed the seeds 
of the former plants, which were only superficially buried. In 
the case of the Flood, the earth being universally disturbed at its 
surface, especially in regions not greatly elevated, the seeds of 
that era generally perished, while those of other plants of a 
former period rested securely in their deeper deposits. The 
earth, therefore, contrary to Theoretical Geology, is now mostly 
clad with species of plants which preceded those of the "carbon- 
iferous era." There should be added, also, to the foregoing means 
of preservation the very probable escape of many plants upon 
mountainous regions where the force of the waters was greatly 
expended, and especially in ravines that were protected by 
nearly adjacent mountains. Hence the preservation of some of 
the species which contributed to the Coal-formations. Nor does 
an undisturbed condition of deeply imbedded seeds at all inter- 
fere with the sweeping away of such barriers as had given rise 
to lakes and excavations to which the resistance of barriers had 
been tributary. 

It appears, therefore, that Theoretical Geology has built upon 
fossils which represent a vegetation that once formed an integral 
part of what has been transmitted to us. This is also confirmed 
by the present existence of a few of the species of trees that are 
found in the Coal-fields; while, also, as we have seen, "large 
coniferous trees are common to fossiliferous strata of all periods." 
And, says the same principal authority in Theoretical Geology — 
"These discoveries are highly important, as they afford examples 
among the earliest remains of vegetable life, and of identity in 



APPENDIX III.— THE COAL-EORMATIOXS. 707 

MINUTE DETAILS OF organization between the most ancient of 
the primeval forests of our globe and some of the largest living 
coniferae." — Buckland's Geology. 

Theoretical Geology gains nothing, therefore, from this kind 
of " medals," but which, on the contrary, attest the factitious na- 
ture of all those which have hitherto borne an important part in 
its arrangement of the fossiiiferous rocks, its typical system, its 
high tropical temperature in northern regions, its carbonic acid 
atmosphere, and its doctrine of spontaneity of being. Take, 
then, the "medals" as we find them; give to them that natural 
import which is stamped upon their living prototypes, or their 
exact analogies — each and all come to the rescue of the most 
fundamental laws of nature, of the greatest and best established 
principles in science, and to the defense of that Eevelation which 
needs the protection of man only for the sake of his own dignity, 
his moral worth, his duty to a Beneficent Creator, and as a man- 
ifestation of gratitude for the revelation of what he was, and is, 
and is to be, and of the origin of that nature by which he is sur- 
rounded, which was created for his uses and enjoyment, and 
through which he might contemplate the Infinite Wisdom and 
Goodness of its Author. 



THE END. 



EKRATA 



Page 130, line 15 from end, for body, read senses, 
Page 349, line 11 from end, for Infidelity, read Science. 



WORKS BY DR, PAINE. 



I. 
Medical and Physiological Commentaries. Octavo. Vols. I. and II. , 1840 ; pp. 1531. 

Vol. III., 1844. 

IL 
Institutes of Medicine. Octavo. First Edition, 1847. Ninth Ed., 1870 ; pp. 1151. 

in. 

Materia Medica and Therapeutics. 12mo. First Ed., 1848. Third Ed., 1859 ; 

pp. 411. 

IV. 

Physiology of the Soul and Instinct as distinguished from Materialism. Octavo, 

700 pages; 1872. 

V. 

Memoir of Rohert Troup Paine. 1 000 copies, illustrated ; Quarto ; pp. 524. One 
copy, folio, for the library of Harvard University ; privately printed, 1852. 

VI. 

On the Cholera Asphyxia of New York. Octavo. 1832 ; pp. 160. 

VII. 

On the Philosophy of Vitality, and on the Modus Operandi of Remedial Agents. 

Octavo. 1842 ; pp. 70. 

VIII. 

Experiments to ascertain whether the quantity of Blood circulating in the Brain may 

be reduced by Bloodletting. Published originally in the Medico- Chirurgical 

Review. London, 1834. 

IX. 
On Theoretical Geology, sustaining the natural interpretation of the Mosaic Narra- 
tive of Creation and the Flood, in opposition to the prevailing geological hypoth- 
eses. Octavo; pp.121. Published originally in the Protestant Episcopal Quar- 
terly Preview, New York, April, 1856. 

X. 

Organic Life as distinguished from the Chemical and Physical Doctrines. 12mo. 

1849 ; pp. 53. 

XI. 

Examination of Reviews. Octavo. 1841 ; pp. 96. 

xn. 

Physiology of Digestion. Octavo. 1844. 

xni. 

Defense of the Medical Profession of the United States. Octavo. 1847. 

XIV. 

Essays and Reviews in Medical and other Periodicals, among which are seventeen 
articles showing the superiority of Medical Education in the United States over 
that in Great Britain, founded upon Parliamentary Documents, and which ap- 
peared editorially in the New York Medical Press from Jan. 29 to June 4, 1859. 



THE 



INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 

By MAKTYN PAINE, A.M., M.D., LL.D., 

Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica in the University of New York; Author 
of the "Medical and Physiological Commentaries," "A Treatise on the Soul and Instinct," 
"Therapeutics and Materia Medica," etc., etc. ; Corresponding Memher of the Royal Ve- 
rein fiir Heilkunde in Preussen; Corresponding Member of the Royal Medico-Chirur- 
gical Academy of Turin ; Corresponding Member of the Gesellschaft fiir Natur 
und Heilkunde zu Dresden ; Honorary Member of the Imperial University 
Physico-Medical Society of Moscow ; Member of the Medical Society of 
Leipsic ; of the Medical Society of Sweden ; of the Montreal Nat- 
ural History Society ; and of many other Learned Societies. 

"With a Portrait. New Edition, Kevised and Enlarged, with a Copious Index. 



The Publishers, in offering to the profession a New and Enlarged Edition of Dr. Paine' s Insti- 
tutes of Medicine, avail themselves of the opinion of the Medical Press in behalf of the work, 
and subjoin numerous extracts from late periodicals. Some of the extracts bear upon a controvert- 
ed question, but the Publishers are not disposed that their copyright shall suffer by any abstraction 
from the merits of the work; and that the latter may go forth under unquestionable authority, 
they have made the extracts of unusual length. As a prophet, also, is said to be without honor in 
his own country, the Publishers are disposed to show that exceptions occasionally arise, and that 
this may be the more apparent, and as they are content withal, they limit the extracts to American 
periodicals ; or, rather, do not await the arrival of Foreign Notices of this Fourth Edition of the 
Institutes. 



October 8, 1S53. 



From the New York Journal of Medicine, May, 1858. 



" The Institutes is full of learning and philoso- 
phy, and the reader, while impressed with the 
profound erudition of the author, can not but be 
amazed at the amount of labor the book dis- 
closes. * * Professor Paine is engaged in a strug- 
gle for truth. His mind is concentrated upon 
the elimination of facts, and in the pursuit of 
what he deems right he seeks not the applause 
of his contemporaries. He knows full well that 
principles must and will survive the disputations 
of the controversialist. * * He is, in every sense 
of the word, a medical philosopher, a devotee of 
science, and a commentator whose opinions will 
not only pass to posterity, but receive the high 
tribute to which they are entitled. Inflexible in 
his convictions of truth, he can not be moved by 
friend or foe — and he pursues his onward course 
with an earnestness and zeal characteristic of the 
man. * * "VVe can confidently recommend the In- 



stitutes both to the practitioner and student of 
medicine ; to the former it will be a rich treat- 
it will open to him the wide and fruitful field of 
medical science, and he will see elaborated in it 
the great and leading questions which have so 
long constituted the basis of controversy among 
the learned in our profession. The latter will 
find it a treasury of knowledge — a veritable en- 
cyclopaedia — full of the prominent facts of his 
science ; and its tendency, moreover, will be to 
induct him into habits of thought and reflection. 
Lastly, we may be permitted to say that the ar- 
ticle on the ' Rights of Authors' has been elicit- 
ed by what Professor Paine deemed an infringe- 
ment upon his claims; and he has entered upon 
the subject not only with zeal, but, in the lan- 
guage of the law, he has made out his case by a 
chain of very positive evidence." 



From the same Journal of July, 1858. 



" There is no where to be found in medical lit- 
erature, nor in all medical works extant put to- 
gether, so full, so complete, so accurate an ex- 
position and elucidation of the functions, and 
the paramount importance of the ganglionic sys- 
tem in influencing all the organic functions (in- 
cluding secretion) physiologically and pathologic- 
ally, as is contained in the ' Institues' and other 
writings of Dr. Paine. An examination of the 
Index of the ' Institutes' alone will prove this. 
Fifty such essays as that of Dr. Campbell could 
be compiled from the ' Institutes,' and then 
leave material, facts, and illustrations enough for 
as many more, all embodying and setting forth 



the same doctrines. * * The author of the ' In- 
stitutes' and of the ' Medical and Physiological 
Commentaries' can well afford to bide his time. 
His fame is secure. It will grow brighter with 
time. The profession will delight to cherish it 
and to do him honor. They will not allow a 
single particle of his just merits to perish, or to 
be appropriated by others. Posterity will vindi- 
cate all his just claims and assign his rank among 
the great minds of our country. But few proper- 
ly appreciate, or are even acquainted with the 
extent of his Herculean labors. None but those 
who have labored in the same field can justly es- 
timate the vast range of his learning. — C. A. L." 



From the American Medical Gazette, New York, June, 1S5S. 



"That the 'Institutes of Medicine' and the 
'Medical and Physiological Commentaries' are 
characterized by great analytic power, profound 
philosophy, rare genius, and unsurpassed learn- 
ning, no candid reader can deny ; that they will 
rank with the foremost works in our science, and 
entitle their author to a high rank among the 



greatest men in medicine, will hardly be dis- 
puted. * * In the late Appendix to the Institutes 
many important subjects are discussed with the 
usual acuteness and ability of the author. The 
Index, of 175 pages, may well be called a model 
index, as it contains a brief summary, as it were, 
of the entire work." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



The September Number of the foregoing jour- 
nal contains a forcible and triumphant article of 
thirteen pages, by Professor C. A. Lee, in defense 
of Professor Paine's claims of originality in elu- 
cidating and applying what is designated as the 
"excito-secretory function of the nervous sys- 
tem," and showing that the term itself has been 
derived from his Institutes of Medicine. We 
quote the following : 

/'Dr. Paine claims, and very justly, as may 
be seen by our extracts, a long priority in desig- 
nating the nervous mechanism through which 
the secretions are physiologically influenced; and 
although he has not thought it worth his while 
to insist upon his priority in the small matter of 
bestowing a name upon the function, we have 
6hown that he suggested the very name which is 
now apparently conceded by nearly all the med- 
ical periodicals in this country to form the only 
originality belonging to Dr. Campbell. But what 
is alone of any importance, Dr. Paine was not 
only the first, but still the only one to carry the 
'excito-secretory function' and all the physio- 
logical laws of the nervous system into patholo- 
gy and therapeutics. * * But Dr. Paine regards 
the excito-secretory function of the nervous sys- 
tem as a very minor part of the influences of that 



system, the most important of which is its vari- 
ously alterative effects upon the organic func- 
tions ; or, in his own language, ' in all the cases 
the nervous power is rendered stimulant, or de- 
pressant, or alterative to the organic properties 
and functions, and variously energetic, according 
to the operating cause, and the intensity and 
suddenness with which it may operate." — p. 107. 
" The whole of this disputation has had its origin 
in a mere pretense that has grown out of a name. 
Excito-secretory function is the magic word which 
is made to engulph the whole philosophy that 
concerns the labyrinth of the organic functions 
in their connection with the nervous system. 
But it is a word of such partial import as not to 
convey the slightest connection with pathology 
and therapeutics; but, on the contrary, to im- 
press the belief that it is limited to the natural 
state of the body. It disregards all the modify- 
ing influences of the nervous system upon organ- 
ic actions and their products, whether induced 
by remedial or morbific agents; and the inap- 
propriateness of the term, beyond its mere phys- 
iological import, may readily be seen should any 
one attempt its introduction into any of the path- 
ological or therapeutical branches of Dr. Paine's 
Institutes of Medicine." 



From the Virginia Medical Journal, July, 1858. 



" In these degenerate days, when all men bow to 
the sway of public opinion, and are more prone, 
alas, to be ruled by policy than to follow the 
guidance of reason and judgment ; in these latter 
days— when the voice of the people is the voice 
of God, we, at least, should not withhold our 
praise from him who fears not to stem the cur- 
rent of popular opinion, and who strikes a bold 
blow in defense of the right. However we may 
wonder at his hardihood, and hesitate to follow 
his rash example, we involuntarily admire this 
uncompromising devotion to his own doctrines, 
and respect the courage we are too timid to imi- 
tate. The author of the work we have now un- 
der consideration is emphatically such a man as 
we have endeavored to' describe.. At a period in 
the history of medicine when the mind of the 
profession is running like a torrent under the 
guidance of Andral r Louis, and the other brill- 
iant leaders of the pathological anatomists, into 
the humoral theory of disease — when, too, the 
reaction against the heroic school of medicine 
had reached to such an extent as to favor the 
rise and temporary success of the infinitesimal 
dogma, and, more important than all — when the 
progress of organic chemistry is startling the 
minds of men with its bold innovations and 
brilliant theories in physiology and pathology, 
it was then that Dr. Martyn Paine, almost alone, 
with nothing to support him save his indomitable 
energy, his great learning, and his intrepid heart, 
stood up before the medical world in defense of 
the waning school of vital physiologists and the 
time-honored solidism of Stahl and Hunter — • 



when medicine expectants was most triumphant 
he still advocated blood-letting and the admin- 
istration of remedies on the heroic plan — when 
Liebig, Thompson, and Lehmann unite in lead- 
ing the student through the attractive investiga- 
tions and plausible theories of zoochemistry, 
Dr. Paine etill gallantly defends the creed of 
Bichat and the vitalists against all comers, and 
charges boldly and effectively upon the ever in- 
creasing ranks of the humoral pathologists. 

" It is justly due to this learned and zealous in- 
vestigator and medical philosopher to say that 
Ave do not believe there can be found another man 
in America who would have waged this unequal 
war for so long a time and with such signal abil- 
ity; and although we doubt whether many of 
our readers have ever devoted time enough to 
his various books, tracts and essays to enable 
him to do justice to his labors in medicine, yet 
we will point to every thing which has emanated 
from his pen as being characterized with an 
amount of learning, profound reasoning, and a 
power of resistance equal to the emergency. * * 
We can not but be astonished at the amount of 
ground traveled over by this zealous student, 
and we may point him out to the young in the 
profession as a noble example of what may be ac- 
complished by those who will imitate his indus- 
try and perseverance after knowledge." 

The August Number of the foregoing journal 
contains the able article to which reference is 
made under our extract from the New Hamp- 
shire Journal of Medicine. 



From the American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Philadelphia, July, 1S58. 



" Dr. Paine's Institutes of Medicine presents 
throughout ample evidence of the general erudi- 
tion of its author, his habits of close investiga- 
tion, and his intimate acquaintance with the 
subjects of which he treats, and with the views 
entertained by others in respect to them. A de- 
gree of originality and independence of thought 
pervades all his teachings, whether these have 
reference to the vital conditions and functions of 
the human organism, the laws by which they are 
governed, or to the nature, causes, and tenden- 
cies of disease, and the curative measures by the 
agency of which this may be best conducted to a 
favorable termination. 

"The Institutes of Medicine as presented by Dr. 
Paine, whether we receive them as true, or reject 
them as false, are, nevertheless, based upon a 



truly philosophical investigation, aided by all 
the accumulated light derived from the observa- 
tions, experiments, and reasoning of preceding 
and contemporary authorities, of the physiology, 
pathology,, and therapeutics of the human sub- 
ject. 

It is, we confess, somewhat cheering to meet 
with one of the high intellectual endowments of 
Dr. Paine, who, at the present day, when the 
doctrines of physiologists, pathologists, and ther- 
apeutists are alike verging into materialism— 
when the organic functions, at least, of the ani- 
mal organism are all referred to a mere modifi- 
cation of the same action and reaction which oc- 
cur in brute matter, has sufficient courage to 
raise his voice in defense of the vitality of the 
system ; in recognition of the fact that our or- 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



gans are built up and maintained in a healthful 
condition for the regular performance of their 
appropriate functions by a principle which we 
denominate life, and by which the material ele- 
ments of the animal organism are almost entire- 
ly removed from out the control of those merely 
physical laws to which, as dead matter, they 
would necessarily be subjected. 

"We consider the treatise to be one well worthy 
of an attentive study on the part of every ad- 
vanced student and practitioner of medicine, to 
whose notice we earnestly recommend it. Al- 
though far from being inclined to indorse the ac- 
curacy of every doctrine advanced by the author, 
nor the chain of reasoning by which he attempts 



its support, we are, nevertheless, convinced that 
his prelections, from the amount of truth set 
forth in them, and the vitality by which they are 
pervaded, if they do not actually convey sound 
views oil every thing that relates to the philoso- 
phy of medicine, can not fail to lead at least to a 
correct basis for the establishment of such views. 
The strong conservative predilections of Dr. 
Paine, which induce him to subject every new 
observation and theory in medicine to the sever- 
est scrutiny, and to refuse its admission until 
positively established, can have no other than a 
favorable influence upon his readers, by teaching 
them to be progressive only in the road of posi- 
tive truth D. F. C." 



From the Xorth American Medico- Chirurgical Review, September, 1S5S. 



"No one can read the Institutes of Medicine 
without being filled with respect and even ad- 
miration for the profound erudition, the pains- 
taking and systematic research, and the laborious 
reflection exhibited so abundantly in its pages. 
With careful and discriminating hands Dr. Paine 
has gathered together, from the writings of both 
the earlier and contemporary physiologists, the 
numerous important facts and. details which con- 
stitute the subject-matter — the crude material — 
so to speak, of his favorite science, and arranged 
and built them up into a stately edifice — the In- 
stitutions Medicinse — whose great corner-stones 



are Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics. 
We conclude our remarks by earnestly recom- 
mending his work to the careful perusal and 
study of every one interested in physiology, 
whether in its aspect of a pure or an applied sci- 
ence. The breadth and comprehensiveness of 
many of its doctrines, the great questions in which 
it abounds, and the consummate skill and learn- 
ing with which these are generally treated, stamp 
it as a valuable treatise which should find a place 
in every philosophical library and be consulted 
by every physician who practices his profession 
as a science and not as an empyrical art." 



From the Medical and Surgical Reporter, Philadelphia, May, 1S58. 



"Dr. Paine gives us two very copious Indexes 
and an Appendix to his Institutes of Medicine, 
and we find throughout the work constant refer- 
ences from page to page to facilitate the task of 
the student in acquiring a complete knowledge 
of every subject. Finally, as a postscript, he de- 
tails in full what he claims as his own, and we 
think we can not do better than lay his claims be- 
fore our readers. 

" Inhis Preface to this fourth edition Dr. Paine 
says: 'This work, originally published in 1S47, 
remains without change, as the author has seen 
no reason to modify any of his doctrines.' But 
in his Appendix he does ample justice to all sub- 
sequent discoveries in physiology and chemistry. I 



He says: 'Whatever may have been subse- 
quently disclosed in physiology and chemistry is 
essentially in harmony with all that the author 
incorporated in the foundation upon which his 
Institutes are erected, and places them beyond 
the probability of being much invalidated. In 
his discussion of organic chemistry as applied 
to physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, it is 
evident that he could not doubt that this inva- 
sion upon medicine would prove ephemeral, and 
that the chemist would soon retreat into the ap- 
propriate field of nature.' 

" He reviews very thoroughly all the evidence 
connected with this statement, and certainly 
shows good logical reasons for his views." 



From the Charleston (S. C.) Medical Journal and Reviciu, July, 1S5S. 



" Few men have labored more constantly, more 
earnestly, and with more singleness of purpose 
than the venerable and learned author whose late 
edition of the Institutes of Medicine now lies be- 
fore us. * * The arrangement of the work is ex- 
ceedingly systematic and satisfactory. Step by 
step the reader is led on from the study of the 
functions as they exist in health to the causes and 
consequences of their derangement, and to the 
methods of treatment adapted to them. 

"Professor Paine's style is at once vigorous, 
bold, and classical. Stating in few words the 
thought which he would convey, he does so in 



such a manner as not to allow it soon to be ef- 
faced. His writings are every where character- 
ized by perspicuity and terseness ; and if his 
meaning is not understood (as may often hap- 
pen) it is not due to the faulty expression of it, 
but to the fact that he deals with subjects of great 
depth and difficulty of comprehension — beyond 
the span of many minds, above the reach of all, 
unless close attention and undeviating thought 
be given to their study. The reader may at first 
find some difficulty in following the writer, but 
he will soon become accustomed to his style, and 
read with interest and facility." 



From the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, May, 1S5S. 



"One can not fail, in reading Dr. Paine's Insti- 
tutes of Medicine, to be struck with the immense 
industry of the author, with his originality, and 
with his consistency ; and if we must differ from 
him in some of his views, we do so with the diffi- 
dence due to a learned and conscientious teacher." 

In a subsequent Number (July 29th) it is said 
by " W. E. C." of Dr. Paine's Medical and Phys- 
iological Commentaries : 

" The first peculiarity of Dr. Paine that arrests 
us is the solid, methodical manner in which he 
plants himself at his work — the thorough aplomb 
which he establishes for himself before he grap- 
ples with his subject-matter. You feel assured 
of this in the first ten lines you read. It is not 
going to be any trifling affair, you are at once 



convinced. It is a brawny student of the old 
very old sort you have got into companionship 
with, and if you wish to keep his company you 
must buckle yourself closely to the matter before 
you, and set yourself to hard work. 

" The scope he has taken is our next point of 
note. This is not only shown by allusions and 
casual references in the text, but the foot of al- 
most every page in the book has quotations, with 
chapter and page, from apparently every work 
that can possibly illustrate the subject or enforce 
the writer's views, including not only accredited 
books, magazines, and monographs in our pro- 
fession, but those from every walk of literature, 
giving us a high opinion of the author's cultiva- 
tion of pursuits too often neglected by medical 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



men. These are used, too, not, as is often the 
case, simply to set off the text and suggest ideas 
of the research of the writer, but as genuine il- 
lustrations either of the matter in hand and the 
peculiar view of it taken by the writer, or of the 
mental temperament of the time in which the 
doctrine or its converse was first propounded. 
In short, the book is not that of a sciolist, by a 
great deal, but of a thorough and strong scholar, 
from a very contact with whom strength and re- 
freshment may be derived, even if difference of 
opinion should exist and remain after it. 

" As we have said, it is impossible to review 



here such a work as Dr. Paine' s, but we may 
give an idea of some of its contents, &c, &c. 

" A Dissertation on the Hippocratic and Ana- 
tomical Schools, and another on the writings of 
Louis, conclude the second volume. The last 
paper is as remarkable and as characteristic as 
any thing in the two volumes ; of and in itself it 
shows fully the scope, power, and variety of the 
scholarly Author. We will not comment upon 
it, but earnestly recommend a perusal of it, and 
in return for our good advice would only like to 
watch the countenances of certain friends of ours 
well engaged in the recreation." 



From the Montreal Medical Chronicle, September, 185S. 



" No one can peruse these volumes of Dr. Paine 
(the Institutes and Commentaries) without being 
forcibly impressed with the vast amount of eru- 
dition displayed by the learned Author. Every 
page bears witness to an extent of reading and 
research really surprising. It is not only the 
standard medical works in various languages 
that he has consulted, but periodical literature 
has been thoroughly ransacked to discover new 



thoughts, truths, and experiments in support of 
and bearing upon the peculiar views he advances. 
" As we agree in the main with the vitalists, al- 
though differing from them in some respects, and 
as we admit the vast importance of much that is 
taught by the zoo-chemists, we shall endeavor to 
give our readers, in as few words as possible, the 
view we take of life." 



From the Buffalo Medical Journal and Review, September, 1S58. 



"The Institutes of Medicine first saw the light 
at a time when the humoral and chemical doc- 
trines of life were in the ascendancy, and when 
vitalism was scouted as an obsolete relic of by- 
gone ages. But now, when the opinion begins 
very generally to prevail, that the physical doc- 
trines of life will not suffice for the satisfactory 
solution of the varied phenomena of organic be- 
ings in health and disease, nor for the explanation 
of the modus operandi of remedies, there is evi- 
dently a commencing reaction in favor of the 
doctrines of vitalism ; and this work, and the 
' Commentaries' of our author, begin to be 
sought for with avidity. This must be greatly 
gratifying to Prof. Paine, who, with far-reaching 
foresight, saw very clearly that a system of med- 
ical philosophy, based on the laws of the inor- 
ganic world, could not stand when brought to the 
test of observation and experiment. On reading 
the ' Institutes,' we can not but be struck with 
the admirable consistency of the author's views 
throughout the entire work. The same princi- 
ples, the same philosophy form the foundation 
and substratum of the whole. There is no in- 
consistency, no contradiction, not even the shad- 
ow of any clashing throughout. Taking up each 
topic in its natural order, as each successive one 
emanates from, or depends upon, the preceding, 
there is a lucid order every where displayed — a 
chain, with no broken link. As in a mathemat- 
ical demonstration, each step prepares the way, 
and is necessary for the succeeding. The dem- 
onstration proceeds with logical exactness and 
unbroken sequence, till the conclusion rests on a 
basis impregnable as truth itself. 

" As the author truly remarks, this is the first 
effort that has been made to present the natural 
relations of the whole subject of the institutes of 
medicine, including physiology, pathology, and 
therapeutics in their just order — to point out the 



affinities, and to exhibit throughout the import- 
ant laws and essential foundations of vitalism and 
to maintain throughout a consistency of facts 
and of laws that shall stamp the whole as the 
philosophy of medicine. This has been most 
successfully accomplished ; and the zeal, learn- 
ing, and genius displayed in its accomplishment 
will forever stamp the author as a leading spirit 
in our profession — as one of the great masters in 
our art. If the work bear something of a contro- 
versial aspect, it was unavoidable in carrying out 
the great design of the writer. A simple expres- 
sion of facts, of experience, and of philosophical 
doctrines, would not have sufficed. It was nec- 
essary to expose and refute the errors with which 
the subject was environed." 

In an extended analysis of the work, the re- 
viewer enters upon the author's original views of 
the nervous system, and more specifically as to 
the " excito-secretory system," showing that even 
the term itself was derived from writings of his 
as early as 1842, but that he regarded it as only 
a small part 6f the influences exerted through the 
same system of nerves, and quotes the author 
extensively to this effect. "No one," says the 
Reviewer, " can read Dr. Paine' s Institutes with- 
out being satisfied that ' excito-secretory'' is every 
where comprehended in what is set forth as to 
the general organic influences of reflex action. 
The grand doctrine is again and again reiterated 
in every part of the work, as on page 661," &c. 

" It is not too much to claim for our author and 
countryman that, with unsurpassed acumen and 
ability, he has abundantly established the fact 
that secretion in animals is conducted by powers 
implanted in every part, but that it is constantly 
influenced physiologically, pathologically, and 
therapeutically, by reflex action of the nervous 
system." 



From the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal, Augusta, Ga., August, 1858. 



" Of all American writers none has been more 
indefatigable and laborious than Professor Paine, 
and the works of but few, either in this country 
or in Europe, display a greater amount of learn- 
ing than we find enriching both the Institutes and 
Commentaries of this perhaps most recondite of 
American authors. On opening any of his works 
we may be said to be at once ' lost in a sea of er- 
udition,' and his copious references to the authors 
of every country and every language attest his 
familiarity with the general literature of the 
science. * * In an age when Humoralism and 
Organic Chemistry are threatening to displace all 
other views of physiological and pathological ac- 



tion, this work, because it is ultra in its vitalism 
and solidism, must exert a most salutary influ- 
ence upon the history of the medical opinion of 
the present and the rising generation. It re- 
quires no half-way assertion of the power of nerv- 
ous action to gain its admission ; but he who 
would advocate its unmodified sway, as Dr. Paine 
does, must be as firm and uncompromising as he 
has been throughout the comprehensive work be- 
fore us. The present edition has been prepared, 
apparently with great care. A most copious an- 
alytical index much enhances the value of the 
volume, and attests well the perseverance and 
industry of the author." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



From the 'Memphis Medical Recorder (Tenn.), March, 1853. 



"All praise, we say, to those pathologists, with 
Professor Paine at the head of them, who so long 
and so ably kept alive the anticipation that it 
was through the reactions of various departments 
of the nervous organization, one on the other, 
that pathological and physiological sympathy re- 
sulted. * * In America no earlier or more sedu- 
lous laborer in this field can be pointed out, as we 
think, than Professor Paine ; whether discussing 
the principles of pathology, or physiology, or 



therapeutics, it has been the distinguishing merit 
of this writer always to keep steadily before his 
mind the probable influence of reflex nervous ac- 
tion in the production of the phenomena he may 
be treating of. * * Especially has he acquired 
well-won laurels by the use he has made of this 
principle in the controversy with the mere chem- 
ical theories upon which the influence of Liebig 
was leading men to ground all explanations of 
vital or even mental processes.'' 



From the Nashville Monthly Record (Tenn.), September, 185S. 



After commending the Medical and Physiolog- 
ical Commentaries, Professor Wright remarks 
that: 

"It is in the Institutes of Medicine that the 
great principles of vital physiology and pathol- 
ogy are broadly and systematically stated. It 
would be impossible for us, if we had much more 
space than we have, to give any thing like a sat- 
isfactory analysis of this profound and inestima- 
ble work. We will only say that if our whole 
system of medical philosophy has escaped being 



overwhelmed by the confident dogmas of the 
chemical school ; if we have learned to look for 
perverted forces rather than vitiated material in 
pathology; if our younger writers see more of 
the nerves in diseased and healthy action and 
less of ferments and catalyses than they did a 
few years ago, then he who desires to assign the 
palm to him who wielded the sword while there 
were none to stand by him, should cast a glance 
back at the Commentaries and Institutes of Mar- 
tyn Paine before pronouncing his decision." 



From the Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery, July, 1858. 



" The Institutes of Medicine, the Medical and 
Physiological Commentaries, and Essays on Vi- 
tality and Remedial Agents, are the titles of some 
of the works which have obtained for Dr. Mar- 
tyn Paine the well-earned name of the great New 
York Physiologist. The first of these is a work 
of no ordinary merit, filled with the marks of 
profound scholarship and genuine philosophy, 



covering the entire field of medicine, and teach- 
ing it as a harmonious whole. * * We can confi- 
dently recommend the Institutes as a treasury 
of learning and invaluable Cyclopaedia of medi- 
cal knowledge, well calculated to lead the stu- 
dent into paths of logical instruction and habits 
of sound reasoning, as well as instructing him in 
medical science." 



From the New Hampshire Journal of Medicine, July, 1S58. 



"It would be impossible to review this im- 
mense book in less than one hundred pages. It 
is a monument of the learning and industry of 
its author, and is full of valuable facts and prof- 
itable suggestions." 

The August Number of the same periodical 
copies from the Virginia Medical Journal an 
able, elaborate, and thorough defense of Dr. 



Paine against the misrepresentations of an En- 
glish Reviewer, with the following prefatory re- 
mark: "No apology is necessary for occupying 
our pages with this long article. The justice of 
the views here expressed, both in relation to Dr. 
Paine' s works and the English reviewer will be 
apparent to all." 



From the Atlanta (Ga.) Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1S58. 

gree worthy of the most thorough investigation. 
* Notwithstanding, however, our great respect 



"In these works (the Institutes, Commenta- 
ries, &c), are embodied the views of one of the 
most laborious and learned medical philosophers 
of this or any other country upon the complicated 
theories in physiology, pathology, and therapeu- 
tics, in reference to the great principles and laws 
of organic being. * * We commend their contents 
in the most decided manner, as in the highest de- 



for the author of these works, we do not desire 
to be understood as committing ourselves to his 
views, being, as he is, the peculiar defender in 
this country, of what we conceive to be (as we 
understand them) the erroneous doctrines of Sol- 
idism and Vitalism." 



From the College Journal of Medical Science, Cincinnati (0.), July, 1858. 



"However much we may differ with the au- 
thor upon some points, we feel that the Institutes 
contains a mine of knowledge within itself, and 
bears the imprint of the close student and original 



thinker. We think, in recommending the book 
to our readers, that we are conferring upon them 
a personal favor." 



From the Oglethorpe Medical and Surgical Journal, Savannah (Ga.), June and August, 1858. 



" This work enjoys celebrity among the grad- 
uates of the University of New York, and has 
been favorably received by the profession gener- 
ally." 

The same journal says of Dr Paine's Medical 
and Physiological Commentaries that " No work 



written in this country has fallen under our ob- 
servation, to which the terms learned and able 
could be more appropriately applied than to this 
production of the mind and pen of its accom- 
plished author." 



From the New Orleans Medical News and Hospital Gazette, July, 1858. 
"In our last number (which we have not seen) I on Vitality and Modus Operandi of Remedies), 
we noticed Professor Paine's Institutes of Medi- which are most welcome to a place in our library. 
cine. We have now to make our acknowledg- We only regret that the size and objects of this 
ments of the foregoing valuable works (the Med- journal preclude our giving a more extended 
ical and Physiological Commentaries, and Essays I notice of the whole of these valuable works." 

From the Peninsular Journal of Medicine and Collateral Sciences, Detroit, March, 185S. 

"We bespeak for this enlarged edition of the I Institutes of Medicine a hearty reception and a 

I studious reading." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



From the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, October, 1S53. 



" No name in American Medical Literature oc- 
cupies a more prominent or worthy position just 
now than that of Professor Martyn Paine; no 
works have been reviewed in our medical jour- 
nals which have exhibited such profound learn- 
ing, such industry, such extended research. The 
works, whose titles are given above (The Insti- 
tutes, Commentaries, and Essays on Vitality and 
Remedial Agents), embrace a period of almost 
twenty years, from their first to their last dates 
of publication, and the most superficial reader 
can not but bear witness to the singular unity of 
design in the entire series of works, as well as to 
their careful maturity, for which so few medical 
writers of the old or new world have labored, and 
to which so few arrive. This testimonial to the 
genius of Paine, in which the medical press of 
America so cordially unite, is the more memora- 
ble when we call to mind the obstacles which he 
has encountered, the elements of opposition 



through which he has advanced to such honora- 
ble position. Twenty years ago the mechanical 
and chemical doctrines of physiology, whereby 
it was sought to abandon the idea of a distinct 
Principle of Life, were largely adopted by lead- 
ing philosophers of the world ; but, in the very 
face of those prevailing doctrines, Paine became 
at once, always — and always consistently — emi- 
nently the champion of vitality and solidism. 
These two ideas are the fonndation and key-stone 
of all his views. He had the wise foresight to 
anticipate that the prevalent opinions of twenty 
years ago were unstable; and though slowly 
working his way onward and upward, his ulti- 
mate triumph has proved the highest tribute to 
his geuius and scholarship." 

" To the laborious thinking student of medi- 
cine every where Ave commend the writings of 
Martyn Paine." 



From the Maine Medical and Surgical Reporter, January, 1859. 

11 Dr. Paine discusses (in the Institutes) with | sophical, and, if we admit the premises of our 
marked ability the points of difference between i author, we are forced by his admirable and logie- 
the vitalists, of whom he is the most distinguish- al reasoning to admit the correctness and truth 
ed exponent, and the chemical physiologists." of his conclusions." 

"The arrangement (of the subjects) is philo- | 

From the Peninsular and Independent Medical Journal, Detroit, Michigan, February 7, 1S59. 

erudite philosopher, Dr. Paine has shown con- 



" We may safely say that this work (the Insti- 
tutes of Medicine) is not second to anyone of the 
kind in the language, if any can be found of equal 
merit." 

" A profound and methodical thinker and an 



summate skill in presenting his favorite and 
truthful theory of Vitalism, as opposed to the 
chemical and mechanical doctrines of life." — 
N. D. S. 



From the Neiv York Medical Press, January 22, 1859. 
and distinguished author 



" This elaborate work (the Institutes) displays 
in every page the profound learning, immense 
research, and sound philosophy, of the venerable 



It is, at the same 
time, a triumphant refutation of the false doc- 
trines of materialism, and other kindred theories." 



From the Pacific Medical and Surgical Journal, San Francisco, California, December, 1858. 



" Is there a science of Medicine ? We think 
there is, but it is, like the tomb of Moses, un- 
known to this day." " The facts exist ; but they 
are not acknowledged by all ; they are not classi- 
fied," &c. 

" Our author has attempted, in these Institutes, 
to give the philosophy of medicine. He has suc- 
ceeded in giving more of the true philosophy of 



I medicine than has ever before been given in any 
work. There is order, sequence, and harmony to 
an eminent degree in this work. It is an edifice, 

! and though not an Egyptian pyramid, it is still a 
magnificent structure, which few men in our pro- 
fession could make in greater perfection, or in 
more ample proportions." 



From the Medical Journal of North Carolina, April, 1859. 



" These are works (The Institutes of Medicine 
and the Med. and Physiolog. Comm.) of vast re- 
search, of the most extensive erudition, and of 
wonderful ability, reflecting the greatest credit 
on their author, his country, and the profession 
of which he is a member. They embrace, in 
fact, the whole arcana of. medical science, con- 
taining full expositions of every department in- 
cluded in the professional curriculum, presenting 
learned and erudite treatises on all topics of in- 
terest to the physician, and offering so wide a 
field for contemplation and study as to fill us 
with surprise that one man could have accom- 
plished so much. There is an unpretending sim- 
plicity in his style, too, which is very pleasant 
and attractive, especially in these days of bom- 
bastic inflation and pedantic superfluities. In 



fact, Dr. Paine's works are a success, and not even 
the most carping critic can deny the fact without 
proving himself too ignorant and malicious for 
his office. As regards the great subjects of 'sol- 
idism,' 'humoralism,' 'vitalism,' &c, which are 
so extensively discussed in these books, we have 
neither the time nor space to consider them at 
present, but can only say that Dr. Paine sus- 
tains his views with wonderful plausibility, eru- 
dition, and ability. No physician should esteem 
his library complete until these three admirable 
works have been added to it, not as a mere or- 
nament or for the name of the thing, but to be 
studied carefully and continuously, as well as in 
that spirit of exultation which the pre-eminent 
success of a fellow-countryman must engender 
in every patriotic bosom." 



Professor E. Warren, M.D., the editor, remarks 
that "Dr. Martyn Paine is, by all comparison, 
the most able and erudite of American authors, 



From the Baltimore (Md.) Journal of Medicine. 

and the special champion of those great doctrines 
of Vitalism and Solidism, to the advocacy of which 
we stand at all times committed." 



From the Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, September, 1868. 
"The magnificent achievement before us con- 1 "We know of no book in our language which 
tains the labor and brains ordinarily spread over gives evidence of such extended learning." 
the construction of a whole library of medicine." | 

From the Detroit Review of Medicine and Pharmacy, July, 1S6S. 



" The volume is a library of philosophical and 
practical medicine." " The Doctor's Note, Rights 
cf Authors, settled the question 



stand the test of time like the old granite hills 
of New Hampshire. It can never meet with any 
The work will 1 successful opposition.— N. D. S." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 

NOTICES BY DISTINGUISHED 
NON-PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS. 



The Physiological Articles in this work having attracted attention beyond the limits of the pro- 
fession, the following extracts from Notices are selected from distinguished journals which are not 
medical, hut in which the Notices were evidently written by those who had studied the work, and 
which, therefore, embody public opinion. 



From the North American Review, April, 1S63. 



11 This work covers the entire ground of physi- 
ology, pathology, and therapeutics, and, logical in 
arrangement, minute in subdivision, affluent in 
references to other books, and continually refer- 
ring back and forward to its own pages, it consti- 
tutes an admirable system of medical science. 
This were ample praise. But in addition to this, 
the successive subjects are treated by Dr. Paine 
with great conciseness, indeed, but with great 
vigor and earnestness, with frequent originality, 



and in a style which shows that, when his opin- 
ions coincide with those of others, they are yet his 
through the independent action of his own mind. 
Then, too, if he agrees with no one else, he is 
uniformly consistent with himself, his conclusions 
following legitimately from his premises, and his 
views on allied departments of science or art bear- 
ing tokens that they belong to the same system, 
and rest on parity of reason." 



From the Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1SG3. 



theoretic materialism. Against this torrent Pro- 
fessor Paine has stood firm as a column of ada- 
mant." " Whatever may be his peculiarities of 
belief, all parties must bear testi ony to his learn- 
ing, genius, individuality, and pure independence 
of mind." 



" Of the two great schools, namely, the Chem- 
ical and the Vital, Dr. Paine is a leader if not the 
head of the latter." "From the high character 
of the chemical theorists, and the plausibility of 
their pretentions, they seemed, for a while, to 
carry with a rush every thing before them. Med- 
ical science was thus tending to a system of low 

From the American Quarterly Church Review, April, 1S63. 
"In the Appendix the Author attempts to de- I and refutes effectively, we think, the materialism 
rnonstrate the substantive existence of the Soul of the day, by which infidels would rob the soul 
and the Instinctive Principle upon physiological | of its immortality." 
grounds. The demonstration is exceedingly able, | 

From the Boston Review, March, 1S63. 



"Its strong points are a broad and thorough 
treatment of the whole science of physiology, 
pathology, and therapeutics ; a sturdy conviction 
of the soundness of its positions; a clear under- 
standing of the opposing theories ; and a vigorous 
classic, concise, and unflinching style of writing." 



" In a labored supplementary dissertation he 
contends with great cogency for the distinct ex- 
istence and immortality of the soul, against the 
materialists and all who, confounding reason with 
instinct, push us downward toward annihila- 
tion." 



From the New York Evening Post, August 8, 1S63. 



"Dr. Paine's works are of the highest order of 
medical scholarship. The volume before us re- 
quires no praic It is a most valuable magazine 
of therapeutical sciences, containing, as it doe3, 
the results of thorough investigation which are 
here carefully digested and applied. The learn- 
ed author discards utterly anv dependence upon 
organic chemi try for the prosecution of physio- 
logical or pathological research, and proves his 
positions by quotations from Lehmann. 



"The most curious chapter, for metaphysi- 
cians, will be found in the Appendix, where Dr. 
Paine has embodied an essay on the 'Soul and 
Instinct, physically distinguished from material- 
ism.' 

" Many of the positions taken by Dr. Paine are 
original with him. He is a physician of extraor- 
dinary attainments; and his wo-ks have been 
liberally copied from at home and abroad." 



From the New York Daily Times, February 7, 18G3. 



"Professor Paine's Institutes of Medicine are 
based on broad and prominent principles of Na- 
ture." " 'Solidism and vitalism,' the book opens, 
'will form the basis of these Institutes;' and to 
the elucidation of th^se time-tried doctrines, and 
to their defense against Chemical Philosophy and j 
kindred neologisms, he bri-gs the results of long 
and severe investigation and eminent knowledge. 
He does not scruple to enter the lists and try his 
lance against tho glittering armor of T iebig and 
Humrot.tvt. and it is apparent to every on- that 
the blows are well aimed, and the weapo > impelled 
by a stout arm. guided by a clear eve. with a vig- 
orous brain behind it." " We do not pretend to 



command the work to the Profession. It is already 
thoroughly appreciated there. But the- e are now 
such a large number of non-professional students 
and investigators in this field of research that we 
wish to call attention to this new edition of a 
standard professional book." "In a very enter- 
taining chapter on the 'Rights of Authors.' in 
which Professor Paine dissects the claims of those 
who pretend to hare antedated him in the discov- 
ery of some valuable principles, and in the state- 
ment of some important theories, he clearly shows 
his priority in research, discovery, and promulga- 
tion of the doctrines in question." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



From the Taunton (Mass, 

" This massive work is alike remarkable for the 
range of its learning and the vigor of its logic. 
We feel, as we read, that Professor Paine is not 
only vast in his sweeps, but unerring in the return 
of his curves. As an inquiry into what is so far 
known of the treatment of diseases as to have been 
demonstrated by long and enlightened practice, 
this elaborate work is most thorough in its array 
of facts, and singularly vigorous in its reasoning. 
It is emphatically a student's book; and yet no 
one capable of drawing an inference from premises, 



) Gazette, February, IS 63. 
and of understanding how premises should be es- 
tablished, can read these 'Institutes' without 
growing in wisdom on the subject, if he do not 
find cause to cast out some crude and perilous 
opinions Avhich he had previously entertained. 
Certainly, so antagonistic are curative theories, 
that it behooves every man to inquire for himself; 
and nowhere can he look with more satisfaction 
for the legacies which all the ages have bequeathed 
to the healing art than in this volume." 



From the Philadelphia Presbyterian Standard, February, 1S03. 



" Dr. Paine does not do himself justice, as this, 
instead of the seventh, is really the eighth edition 
of his great work." 

"After twenty years' acquaintance with the 
schools of Edinburgh, Dublin, London, and Phila- 
delphia, we feel warranted in saying that we have 
seldom met with any single work that is better 
calculated to stimulate an active mind that is real- 
ly and earnestly engaged in the pursuit of medical 
knowledge than in this work of Dr. Paine now be- 
fore us. Dr. Paine grasps every subject with the 



hand of a giant." "The student who masters 
this book, if he have a capacity to comprehend 
demonstration, will never confound our material 
organization with that which dwells within it." 

" We commend this really learned, manly, and 
wonderously suggestive treatise to all our young 
medical friends ; and in order that some hundreds 
of them may know our estimation of its value, we 
shall take care to have this, our judgment of its 
merits, made known to the medical schools of this 
city." 



From the American Presbyterian, Philadelphia, 1863. 



In a second notice of the seventh edition of the 
Institutes, the writer says that: "A careful ex- 
amination of this work shows the author to have 
a fine mind, highly cultivated, and ardently de- 
voted to the advancement of his profession. He 
seems to have read and carefully digested almost 
every thing of value written upon it. Truth is 



ever the object before his mind, and while he states 
his own opinions strongly, we admire the fairness 
with which he presents the views of those opposed 
to him." "The principles of the work will be a 
safe guide to the active physician, and may be 
trusted in cases of doubt arid danger." 



From Zion's Herald and Wesleyan Journal, January, 1863. 



"We commend the 'Institutes' to physicians 
and to scholars of all professions. It should be in 
every public library." 

" The arguments to show from physiology that 



the mind is a spirit, and the revelation of its im- 
mortality is reasonable, are original and profound, 
and very strongly expressed." 



From the New York Observer, January 7, 1863. 



"The medical student makes the Institutes of 
Medicine his text-book, and every intelligent per- 
son who reads it with attention finds a field of 
knowledge opened up to his mind that constantly 
furnishes him most important and useful instruc- 
tion. It is often said that when a man begins to 



read medical books he imagines himself the vic- 
tim of all the diseases he reads of. Such a philo- 
sophical work as this will not leave him liable to 
an evil like that, but he will learn those great 
principles on which health and life depend." 



From the New York Sunday Times, January 11, 1S63. 



relative branches of study, are elaborately treated 
in these ' Institutes,' and an extraordinary amount 
of information is given on the subject of physio- 
logical and pathological chemistry, the production 
of animal sugar, the absorption and circulation of 
plants," &c. 



"Dr. Paine's discussion of the vital principle 
and its properties will deeply interest many a read- 
er besides medical practitioners and students, and 
his whole treatment of the subject of organic phi- 
losophy will be found at once able, eloquent, eru- 
dite, and full of remarkable originality." " Phys- 
iology, pathology, and therapeutics, with all their 

From the Neiv York Evening Express, January 10, 1863. 
"A most valuable book the 'Institutes' must I amusing and instructive one for the general read- 
be for the practical physician, as well as a most I er." 

From the New York Christian Times, January 22, 1863. 

authority among medical men. Its author is both 
known and honored as the patriarch of American 
physicians, and as a savan of whom the profession 
is justly proud." 



" Criticism is not the thing required in respect 
to this learned and philosophical volume. It is 
sufficient that Ave call attention to this as the sev- 
enth edition of an opus magnum of the highest 



From the New York Commercial Advertiser, January 13, 1S63. 
"This seventh edition of the ' Institutes' is the I brother physicians and their successors. Successful 
ithor's legacy, more valuable than rubies, to his | will he be who studies and follows its teachings." 



From the Congregationalist, Boston, January, 1863. 



"The Institutes of Medicine is an invaluable 
repository of scientific information and a lasting 
monument of the author's i dustry, skill, learn- 
iner, and genius. He enters on his work with the 
facility of an adept and the vigor of an athlete. 
Entertaining a lofty scorn of empiricism, he slow- 
ly gathers fact on fact, piling them up into a firm 



foundation for the temple which he would rear, 
who=e solidity, proportions, and effect, we can not 
fail to admire." " To his opponents, as well as to 
his adherents, the book must be of an inestimable 
value. Symmetrical in plan, exhaustive in de- 
tail, clear in style, devoted in spirit, it is at once 
suggestive and satisfactory." 



PROFESSOR PAINE'S INSTITUTES OF MEDICINE. 



From the Buffalo (N 
" Even to non-professional eyes a cursory glance 
over the pages of this great work reveals, to some 
extent, the herculean labor which its preparation 
must have involved. The work before us is not 
ouly a complete digest of all that is known of the 
limitless subjects it discusses, but, venturing bold- 
ly beyond the sphere of previous explorations, Dr. 
Paine has brought in a harvest of discoverJes, by 



Y.) Journal, 1863. 

which science is enduringly enriched." "It is 
not necessary that we should say more in com- 
mendation of so noble a contribution to science. 
We make but few books like this in America, and 
such as are produced on this side the Atlantic, for 
the sake of our National fame, if for no higher 
reason, should be received with due pride and ap- 
preciation." 



From the Worcester (Mass.) Palladium, February, 1S63. 



" The excellent portrait, prefixed to the l Insti- 
tutes,' indicates the character of the man; one 
who is an acute observer, who takes no superficial 
view of subjects, but investigates deeply and wide- 
ly, finding the causes of phenomena, however pro- 
found may be the research required, and tracing 
those causes to all their consequences, however in- 
timate or remote ; with that moral courage, none 
too common among men, that reaches conclusions 

From the Detroit (Mich.) Daily Tribune. 

with the abstruse principle of instinct and the 



emphatically its own, and has no hesitation in the 
avowal of convictions deliberately formed. From 
such intellectual power, cultivated mainly by its 
own effort, and acting upon the dictates of its own 
independent judgment, such a volume as this, 
where there is the requisite mental activity, comes 
as naturally as the ripe corn comes from the prin- 
ciple of life in the germinating seed." 



" We may safely say that this work is not sec- 
ond to any of the kind in the language, if any can 
be found of equal merit. It shows that the au- 
thor is an indefatigable student. Nothing in Phys- 
iology or Philosophy, or any thing belonging to 
the subject, has escaped his eye. A profound and 
methodical thinker, and an erudite philosopher, 
Dr. Paine has shown consummate skill in pre- 
senting his favorite and truthful theory of Vital- 
ism, as opposed to the chemical and mechanical 
doctrines of life, frequently bringing his subject 
to bear in favor of revealed religion, as opposed 
to materialism and sensualism. He has grappled 



substantive immateriality of the human soul, 
which has escaped the notice of his reviewers. 
In proof he has brought to bear arguments entire- 
ly new, and we think unanswerable. The Dr., 
in placing this work before the public, has done the 
professors of medicine and theology great service. 
On this account the work should be found in ev- 
ery clergyman's library as well as that of the phy- 
sician. The profound scholar and painstaking 
lover of truth will find a rich treat in reading this 
work. 



From the "Annual Address before the At.t/mni Association of the Medical Department of the 
University of the City of New York, 1870, by Professor James R. Leamlng, M.D." 

''Large and indiscriminate dosing is of the past. When Dr. Martyn Paine came to New York, a 
young man, he commenced the treatment of disease by withholding medicine, except when it was 
plainly indicated, and then applied it with successful wisdom. The foremost men of that day were 
astonished, and pi'ophesied that the innovator would have but a short professional life, so strongly 
were they wedded to the old way ; but, instead, he gathered about him a host of warm friends and 
admirers, and made his mark upon the practice of the timp, and the day of indiscriminate dosing 
passed away forever. This was before the day of little pills." 



COMMUNICATIONS TO THE AUTHOR. 



As an example of letters -which the author continues to receive, we submit the following 
extract of a letter from the eminent Von Dr. Professor N. Zdekauer, Physician to His Majesty 
the Emperor of Russia, dated St. Petersburg, April 19, 1867. 

" Your valuable works are very often studied by me, and I look on them as on an Enchi- 
ridion of Medical Science and Philosophy. How wise and practical are your chapters on the 
Remedial Actions, on Sympathy, and all the chapters on Pathology ! But your greatest merit 
is to have in a most rational manner treated about Vital Principles and Powers, contrary to 
the most material and dead-born tendencies of the newest authors." 



Published by HAMPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 



£3^ HAsrER & Brothers will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid, on receipt of $5 00. 






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